Rethink strategy on BWIA

The Editor I shall be grateful if you would permit me some space to address the issue of the government bailout of BWIA. With the greatest respect, I suggest that the view propounded by Senator Economist Mary King is both ingenuous and parochial. In that view, BWIA is examined solely as an investment vehicle for government that should more properly be taken up by the private sector and operated to ensure a profit for its brave investors. Failing which government should insist on policing the airline’s operations to expunge unprofitable routes. All very nice and tidy. It is such thinking that has resulted in the privatisation of our postal and other utilities as well as the divestment of critical national enterprises that are seen as having no other purpose than economic viability via efficiency. When Mr Valley was venting his nonchalance at the fate of BWee, he could not have been taken seriously by anyone who understands the greater purpose of our national airline, a full justification of which is detailed in “Revised National Economics.”

In short, BWee is as great a necessity as our Bus Service, but at an international level, and is in fact more vital to our tourism industry and development than any other single instrument on which investment dollars are poured for tourism return. And in the real world, airlines are crumbling globally in the wash of terrorism, SARS and fuel prices. No intelligent investor would touch any airline with a ten -foot pole. And the irony is that taxpayers’ dollars should play no part in BWee’s expenses, since BWee is more a national resource adjunct for our tourism and deserves funding similar to TIDCO’s entitlement. The biggest expense that has beset the airline perennially has been the cost of fuel which this country extracts from our land and labour and sells to BWee punitively, all in the name of conforming to crippling regulations. BWee is in practical terms, part of our infrastructure to facilitate foreign investment. If this cannot be seen, we are mental retards.  I recommend that government buys out all small investors in BWee (particularly gullible staff investors), and begin to pay management fees based on productivity and improvement on investment returns simultaneously selling fuel at a cost to the airline. Placed as we are in the middle of the western hemisphere, we are a natural hemispheric hub and we should develop our Latin tourism more aggressively using our national airline. The myopic view of conventional investment is inapplicable to BWee.

MF Rahman
Lange Park