On Fri­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an an­nounced that the na­tion­al car­ri­er, Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL), had record­ed a con­sol­i­dat­ed unau­dit­ed loss of US$52.8 mil­lion ($339 mil­lion) for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2011. He dis­closed, as well, that Air Ja­maica, which is a sub­sidiary of CAL, had record­ed an unau­dit­ed loss of US$38.1 mil­lion and that Cab­i­net had agreed to the ex­ten­sion of the fu­el hedge to Air Ja­maica's op­er­a­tions at US$2.34 per gal­lon and to CAL's oth­er op­er­a­tions at US$1.50 per gal­lon. He al­so dis­closed that CAL had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed debts in ex­cess of US$42 mil­lion to 14 en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing the IRS, which col­lects US tax­es, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty and its fu­el sup­pli­er, NP. The min­is­ter's state­ment caught the na­tion by sur­prise be­cause it sharply con­tra­dict­ed the claim made on No­vem­ber 14 last year by the air­line's for­mer chair­man, George Nicholas, that the air­line was head­ing for a $200 mil­lion prof­it in 2011.

The prof­it claim by Mr Nicholas-in light of the ac­qui­si­tion of loss-mak­ing Air Ja­maica which was com­plet­ed last year and the on­go­ing pur­chase of nine new, short-haul air­craft-stretched cred­i­bil­i­ty to the point of break­ing. In the con­text of the in­ci­dent in Guyana, the volatil­i­ty of the air­line in­dus­try and the fact that the air­line's fu­el price is de­ter­mined by the Gov­ern­ment, there is no doubt that the claim by Mr Nicholas that CAL made a prof­it of $200 mil­lion was ill-timed. But the Nicholas re­marks raised the is­sue of who is in charge of the air­line, which is whol­ly state-owned. The own­er­ship of the air­line by the State means that the CAL board is di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble to the Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, the en­ti­ty that holds shares in state com­pa­nies, which is a po­si­tion cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pied by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

As Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, and as the per­son legal­ly re­spon­si­ble for the na­tion's fi­nances, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance was ide­al­ly po­si­tioned to pro­vide ad­vice and coun­sel on the ac­qui­si­tion of Air Ja­maica, the de­ci­sion to ex­pand the CAL fleet by the ac­qui­si­tion of the ATR air­craft and the pro­pos­al to re-com­mence flights from the re­gion to Lon­don. It can­not be that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is be­ing viewed as a rub­ber stamp-be­ing asked to find the mon­ey for de­ci­sions and com­mit­ments that have al­ready been made by the air­line's board. If this was the case in the past, Mr Dook­er­an must put an end to this prac­tice im­me­di­ate­ly. He must en­sure that a val­ue-for-mon­ey au­dit is car­ried out on the CAL pro­pos­als for route ex­pan­sion and the ac­qui­si­tion of new air­craft and that the fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies for both ven­tures are sub­ject­ed to rig­or­ous re­view. As a mat­ter of ex­treme ur­gency, Mr Dook­er­an must al­so in­sist that the CAL board pro­duces a busi­ness plan, based on rea­son­able as­sump­tions, that would re­verse the 2011 loss­es this year. If that busi­ness plan means that the Lon­don route must be dropped, oth­er pie-in-the-sky no­tions of fly­ing to In­dia and South Africa re­viewed and the do­na­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter's Chil­dren's Life Fund scrapped, then so be it.

The coun­try's fis­cal po­si­tion sim­ply does not al­low hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to be lost on an air­line. Fi­nal­ly, Mr Dook­er­an must in­sist that the air­line's ac­counts for 2011 and 2010 be sub­ject­ed to the nor­mal au­dit­ing process un­der­tak­en by all state com­pa­nies and that those ac­counts are pub­lished as soon as pos­si­ble so that the tax­pay­ing pub­lic can make an in­formed as­sess­ment about whether the ex­pen­di­ture on the air­line is jus­ti­fied. The au­dit­ed ac­counts are al­so im­por­tant as it is un­clear whether the con­sol­i­dat­ed unau­dit­ed loss of US$52.8 mil­lion in­cludes the le­gal claims that have been made on the air­line as a re­sult of last year's Guyana in­ci­dent.