Shal­iza Has­sanali

State-owned Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (VM­COTT) is op­er­at­ing at a loss. In a bid to bail out the com­pa­ny, Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to re­struc­ture or par­tial­ly pri­va­tise the state en­ter­prise.Con­firm­ing the plans on Fri­day was VM­COTT's chair­man Joe Pires and act­ing CEO Ramesh Lack­han.Pires said VM­COTT will soon award a con­tract to a com­pa­ny to come up with a strate­gic plan and iden­ti­fy busi­ness part­ners for them.On Thurs­day three com­pa­nies were in­ter­viewed for this process.

They would be eval­u­at­ed, Pires said, with one com­pa­ny be­ing se­lect­ed to seek a busi­ness part­ner or part­ners for VM­COTT.The part­ner/s, Pires said, must be able to pro­vide fi­nan­cial back­ing, tech­ni­cal ad­vice and gen­er­ate new busi­ness for them.Cab­i­net would have the fi­nal say as to who the busi­ness parter/s should be."We will hire the con­sul­tants to make it trans­par­ent and above board. But that does not mean that any lo­cal com­pa­ny would not be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty once they fill the cri­te­ria set out by the con­sul­tants."

Pires: There will be no­job cuts or favouritism

Es­tab­lished in 2000, VM­COTT of­fers a range of ve­hi­cle man­age­ment and main­te­nance ser­vices in T&T and the Caribbean.Pires in­sists that VM­COTT, which has an as­set base of $70 mil­lion was "not for sale" nor will its 60 em­ploy­ees face jobs cuts."We are look­ing at align­ing our­selves with a strate­gic part­ner that can car­ry us to the next lev­el. VM­COTT needs tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance for it to sur­vive in the fu­ture," Pires said.

By Sep­tem­ber, Pires said, its part­ner/s should be chart­ing a new way for­ward for VM­COTT.Pires al­so gave the as­sur­ance there would be no favouritism in se­lect­ing its part­ner/s, nor would there be any po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.He said if this should hap­pen, he would re­sign.In the last five years, VM­COTT has not made a prof­it, even though it re­ceives an an­nu­al sub­ven­tion of $15 mil­lion, Pires said.

The $30 mil­lion VM­COTT gen­er­at­ed last year from the main­te­nance and re­pairs of ve­hi­cles, Pires said, was not enough to break even be­cause of over­head costs.Pires said among some of the prob­lems he met at VM­COTT were lack of open ten­der, pil­fer­age of spare parts, sourc­ing spare parts, monies be­ing owed, and ab­sence of a reg­u­lar cash flow.Lack­han said VM­COTT has $3 mil­lion in ob­so­lete spare parts which will soon be auc­tioned.

Cadiz: VM­COT­Towed mil­lions of $$

On Fri­day, Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz, un­der whose purview VM­COTT falls, con­firmed that Gov­ern­ment was look­ing to bring on board pri­vate com­pa­nies at VM­COTT to make the com­pa­ny ef­fi­cient and vi­able.

"It is very much in its ex­plorato­ry stage now. VM­COTT has been op­er­at­ing at a loss. My job is to cor­rect the neg­a­tive that we have there. We are go­ing through VM­COTT with a fine tooth comb to en­sure that we cov­er our loss­es, ex­pand, and make it prof­itable. We have to clean up the bal­ance sheet. There is an aged re­ceiv­able that we are try­ing to col­lect."Asked how much VM­COTT is owned, Cadiz said, "mil­lions of dol­lars."

Cadiz said an au­dit was al­so be­ing con­duct­ed at VM­COTT.He said VM­COTT should not go in­to any arrange­ment at a dis­ad­van­tage or with cap in hand."VM­COTT has been los­ing mar­ket share to oth­er garages be­cause they were not pro­vid­ing a high lev­el of ser­vice.The goal is to build back its cus­tomer base."Cadiz said he saw no rea­son why VM­COTT can­not make a prof­it.He al­so felt that the State should not sub­sidise VM­COTT.

Warn­er: Govt will bringin friends and fam­i­ly

The news of VM­COTT's im­pend­ing pri­vati­sa­tion, how­ev­er, did not go down well with for­mer trans­port min­is­ter Jack Warn­er."This would on­ly open a can of worms, and the Gov­ern­ment would bring on board their "friends and fam­i­ly" to man­age it. I don't think the coun­try should al­low them to get away with this. When VM­COTT was un­der my tenure, I had plans to make it more mar­ketable."Warn­er ques­tioned why the pub­lic was be­ing kept in the dark about VM­COTT's new plans.

He said VM­COTT was un­der­per­form­ing be­cause of lack of fund­ing."The po­lice ser­vice had owed VM­COTT $17 mil­lion when I was na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter. An arrange­ment was put in place to pay the mon­ey in tranch­es."Warn­er said when he re­signed as min­is­ter last year, the bill was re­duced to $6 mil­lion.

Howai: No fi­nal de­ci­sion yet

In re­sponse to an e-mail yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said "no fi­nal de­ci­sion has been made" about the com­pa­ny.Howai ex­plained that in the 2013 bud­get, he named four com­pa­nies that need­ed strate­gic part­ners, one of which was VM­COTT."These part­ners could bring cap­i­tal or could pro­vide some form of fran­chis­ing or tech­nol­o­gy/man­age­ment ca­pac­i­ty. We have not yet de­cid­ed. Each case will have to be con­sid­ered in­di­vid­u­al­ly."

The first phase, Howai said, would in­volve a de­tailed eval­u­a­tion of the com­pa­ny, its needs and po­ten­tial."Then an ap­pro­pri­ate ap­proach re­gard­ing a po­ten­tial part­ner would then be rec­om­mend­ed for Cab­i­net's con­sid­er­a­tion and ap­proval, if Cab­i­net agrees. These po­ten­tial part­ners would be con­sid­ered where ad­di­tion­al val­ue can be added by such a part­ner­ship that would re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the cit­i­zen."

Howai said, with the in­crease of ve­hi­cles on the roads, it was de­cid­ed that VM­COTT should in­crease de­mand for the ser­vic­ing of these ve­hi­cles."It was felt that VM­COTT could be a com­pa­ny which, with suf­fi­cient sup­port, could ad­dress this need by open­ing sev­er­al re­pair/ser­vic­ing cen­tres through­out T&T. This would in­crease the earn­ings of the com­pa­ny while at the same time pro­vid­ing a much need­ed ser­vice to the pub­lic."