PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - State carrier Caribbean Airlines (CAL) is facing a potential write-off of approximately $200 million in losses, including $60 million lost from what executives say could amount to credit card fraud related to airline ticket purchases.
More than $100 million has already had to be written off from the company’s cargo department.
A report submitted to the CAL board of directors recently stated the losses were incurred because there were no policies in place to ensure the enterprise got its earnings.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Who’s minding the store?
Yesterday, the Sunday Express reported on the millon-dollar write-off at national carrier Caribbean Airlines (CAL) in the midst of the company’s financial turbulence.
Part 2 today considers whether CAL is being run in the best interest of its shareholders, the governments of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, by the people appointed to manage it.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - The most troubling thing about the current fuss about free travel at Caribbean Airlines is how familiar it all is. During the many decades of the airline’s previous incarnation as BWIA, flights were plagued with freeloading and flight status abuses, whimsical efforts at pampering wealthy, powerful people who were perfectly capable of paying for their own first-class tickets to any destination to which the airline formerly known as BWee flew.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - The time has come for the Corporation Sole as represented by Finance Minister Larry Howai to step in and rescue the public interest from the politics and mismanagement at Caribbean Airlines (CAL). With red ink running across the airline’s balance sheets, Minister Howai needs to invoke his authority as the representative of shareholding taxpayers and assume his responsibility for taking the airline in hand. That he has already allowed so much wrong to continue without acting is unacceptable.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - FORMER DIRECTOR GENERAL of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, Dr. Chelston Brathwaite, has called for a new focus on local agriculture that will bring benefits including a reduction in the food import bill.
He said the new vision for agriculture should have a focus on making it an integral part of driving agro-related sectors of the economy, including tourism and others.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - The news that our offshore sector was recently severely criticized in the Canadian parliament is one more inconvenient truth that the Barbados economic policymakers will have to face.
In a report earlier this month, the Standing Committee on Finance of that country’s parliament made recommendations to its government on a number of proposals to come down hard on Canadian companies and individuals using this country and other low-tax jurisdictions.

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – The Government of Antigua and Barbuda has announced that it will continue to benefit from the PetroCaribe agreement.
According to a Government statement, at the recently concluded 9th Ministerial Meeting of PetroCaribe and the Summit of Heads Venezuelan it was agreed that the PetroCaribe programme will continue in its current form .

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Guyana will host a multi-stakeholder consultation on Tuesday in preparation for the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Adviser to the President on Sustainable Development, Science and Technology, Navin Chandarpal, says participants will discuss various issues including the recommendations from the Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA) and that based on the outcomes of the consultation the national report will be prepared.

? KINGSTON, Jamaica - The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is now set to appoint a new director general. He is Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo, Brazil's long-serving ambassador to the organisation. His appointment is good news for developing countries insofar as Carvalho de Azevêdo is from a leading developing country that has shown itself not to be averse to taking on the countries that have dominated the WTO. Those countries are the United States and the collective 27-nation European Union.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Former Prime Minister P J Patterson, speaking at the launch of Ambassador Rudy Insanally's new book Multilateral Diplomacy for Small States, bemoaned the fact that people from Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries are no longer in top posts in international organisations.
Mr Patterson is quite correct on that score. But what is now important is to conduct an analysis of why this has happened.
In the past, Caricom citizens held top posts in international organisations, bringing the region much pride and the inevitable benefits.