The gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos is ex­pect­ed to waive more than BD$2 mil­lion in tax­es from the sale of the Al­mond Beach Vil­lage, the Bar­ba­dos Na­tion re­port­ed last week, cit­ing a Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers re­port. Al­mond Beach is owned by the lo­cal Neal & Massy group.

Ac­cord­ing to the Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC) re­port: "Man­age­ment has not tak­en in­to ac­count any amount in re­spect of stamp du­ty or prop­er­ty trans­fer tax on the sale of the trans­ac­tion as they ex­pect these charges to be waived by the gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos."

PwC added: "While we have been pro­vid­ed with cor­re­spon­dence to sup­port man­age­ment's ex­pec­ta­tion of an of­fi­cial waiv­er, we have not been pro­vid­ed with statu­to­ry in­stru­ments or oth­er au­dit ev­i­dence ad­e­quate to sup­port the ac­tu­al waiv­er. Had the stamp du­ty and prop­er­ty trans­fer tax on the trans­ac­tion been record­ed, as­sets held for sale, to­tal as­sets, reval­u­a­tion re­serve and share­hold­ers' eq­ui­ty would all have been re­duced by BD$2.5 mil­lion."

On the same day, the Bar­ba­dos Ad­vo­cate re­port­ed that an "in­ter­est­ing bid (has been) placed for Al­mond Re­sort shares."Cit­ing a trad­ing re­port of the Bar­ba­dos Stock Ex­change, the Ad­vo­cate said, "Some­one wants to buy 100,000 shares of Al­mond Re­sorts In­cor­po­rat­ed."The bid is out­lined in the trad­ing re­port of the Bar­ba­dos Stock Ex­change (BSE), which said the price be­ing quot­ed is two Bar­ba­di­an cents a share.

Quot­ing an un­named fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst, the Ad­vo­cate's Busi­ness Mon­day said that both the bid and the price are very in­ter­est­ing in light of Al­mond Re­sort's quot­ed price on the BSE. The last quot­ed price for Al­mond Re­sorts shares on the BSE was 32 Bar­ba­di­an cents a share.

In its Jan­u­ary 2014 Quar­ter­ly Bul­letin, the IDB had said, "The falloff in tourism val­ue-added and the ef­fect it had on the oth­er pro­duc­tive sec­tors re­sult­ed in the gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos in­creas­ing its fo­cus on the in­dus­try and ear­mark­ing it as a key sec­tor to pro­pel macro­eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. As such, var­i­ous tourism-re­lat­ed cap­i­tal projects (for ex­am­ple, Four Sea­sons, Al­mond Beach Re­sort, and Sil­ver Sands Ho­tel) have been list­ed and are an­tic­i­pat­ed to help take the econ­o­my out of re­ces­sion and spur growth."

Al­mond Re­sorts Inc, a sub­sidiary of the Neal & Massy Hold­ings group, has been in as­set dis­pos­al mode for al­most three years af­ter ac­cu­mu­lat­ing more than B$70 mil­lion in debt, as tourism in Bar­ba­dos slumped caus­ing the is­land's econ­o­my to con­tract.