ANGLEC IN FINANCIAL CRISIS: POSSIBLE LOAD-SHEDDING

The Anguilla Electricity Company Ltd. (ANGLEC) appears to be ‘financially strapped for cash’. Directors of the Board of ANGLEC announced via a radio broadcast on Klass FM, last Thursday, 25th November, that ANGLEC is having difficulty meeting financial obligations to its creditors.

Paraphrasing comments made by one of the directors, Dr. Wycliffe Fahie, “if all the creditors of ANGLEC were to demand their money at the same time, we would have difficulty with that. You could even say that the company would be insolvent.” In an attempt “to get the situation rectified,” the director said they are looking at options to curtail expenditure given the high cost of fuel.

Chairman, Patrick Mardenborough, indicated that the Board met with the Government of Anguilla to discuss the state of affairs of the company. They had hoped to recover some of the outstanding moneys owed to ANGLEC by government statutory bodies such as the Water Corporation and ASPA. Mr. Mardenborough said: “We need to get an injection of cash from the government side. The statutory bodies are our biggest [financial] burden. We know it is a difficult situation for everybody, but in order to sustain ANGLEC as a company, we need to get some receivables from these large creditors…It is time for some action. We get a lot of pretty words, but no commitment. We don’t see anything happening, and I don’t think the company can run much longer on promises.”