Nadaleen Singh

Caribbean Air­lines Ltd record­ed a con­sol­i­dat­ed unau­dit­ed loss of US$52.8 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2011, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said yes­ter­day. Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions in Par­lia­ment, Dook­er­an al­so said that for the last fi­nan­cial year, the Air Ja­maica op­er­a­tions of CAL record­ed an unau­dit­ed loss of US$38.1 mil­lion.

Dook­er­an list­ed the in­di­vid­ual debts of CAL at March 2012 which are greater than TT$200 mil­lion. These to­talled about US$42 mil­lion and ranged from a high of US$8.1 mil­lion to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T and US$6.1 mil­lion in US tax­es payable to the In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to a low of US$544,829 for Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing.

Dook­er­an said US$200,000 has so far been re­mit­ted to the Chil­dren's Life Fund. He said CAL's board had ap­proved US$5 mil­lion for the fund. On the fu­el sub­sidy giv­en to the car­ri­er, Dook­er­an said: "The to­tal sub­sidy for the fu­el pro­vid­ed to CAL as at March 15, 2012 was $141.2 mil­lion (US$22 mil­lion), of which $40.5 mil­lion (US$6.3 mil­lion) was out­stand­ing."

He said Cab­i­net agreed to an ex­ten­sion of the fu­el-hedge mech­a­nism for CAL to cov­er Jan­u­ary 1 to De­cem­ber 31, 2012 at the bench­mark fu­el price of US$1.50 per gal­lon for CAL and US$2.34 per gal­lon for the Air Ja­maica op­er­a­tions. He said CAL has sub­mit­ted claims for fu­el sub­sidy for the Air Ja­maica op­er­a­tions in the amount of US$3.1 mil­lion for the three-month pe­ri­od from Jan­u­ary 1 to March 31, 2012, on which pay­ment can on­ly be made af­ter the claims are au­dit­ed by the Cen­tral Au­dit com­mit­tee of his min­istry.

Claims for the Air Ja­maica op­er­a­tions

for 2012 are cur­rent­ly be­ing au­dit­ed, said the min­is­ter. Asked yes­ter­day via text mes­sage to com­ment on the air­lines' loss­es, Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj replied: "I am un­aware of what the state­ment in Par­lia­ment was, so I am un­able to com­ment." Dook­er­an's an­nounce­ment came five months af­ter the air­line's for­mer chair­man, George Nicholas III, said last No­vem­ber that it had made a prof­it of $200 mil­lion. Nicholas re­signed on April 4.

Speak­ing on No­vem­ber 14, 2011, at the com­mis­sion­ing of the ATR 72 600 se­ries air­craft, Nicholas said CAL had made a prof­it of $200 mil­lion. "Even with re­duced fares, CAL will close a prof­it of around $200 mil­lion this year," he said. "We have al­so made the first ever con­sec­u­tive prof­it in Air Ja­maica's 50-year his­to­ry, of sev­er­al mil­lion US dol­lars."