Cheap LIME tries to go green with new bill
LIME (Cable & Wireless Jamaica Ltd.) is not serious about `going green’, they are only interested in the bottom line. Opting to not receive paper bills will definitely save ‘trees’ but it will also result in huge savings in postage cost , envelopes and paper for LIME.
Why not follow Digicel and give back some nominal amount to the customer who in the process of trying to save our environment actually allows LIME to achieving significant savings in costs?
Why not reduce the charges for mobile and landline Internet access so that customers will be more willing to access their bills online?
As usual, the strategy for LIME is to try and `dupe’ the natives by using strategies that would not be accepted back in the UK.
JLP Government’s Alternative Investment Scheme
Local bankers and financial analysts have chided ordinary Jamaicans for investing their hard earned cash in the various ‘alternative Investment Schemes’ (A.I.S.). They chided them because they withdrew funds from the more traditional institutions and ran after the high interest rates offered by the alternative Investment Schemes. The Jamaica Gleaner reported that Michael Lee Chin said “Be careful of your greed. I see a mania developing [and] it is going to end in disaster – I don’t know how much plainer I can get. I am very passionate about this!” It was alleged that he said this at an investment briefing hosted by the wealth management arm of his banking group. To be fair, Lee Chin, Clarke, Bunting etc. all correctly predicted the eventual demise of the various alternative schemes.
No one thought however that these experienced Bankers, Fund Managers; Investment Advisors etc. would find themselves caught up in the same ’scheme’ only with a bigger player, i.e. the Jamaican Government. The Annual Percentage Rate may be well below that offered by OLINT, Worldwise or Cash Plus but the end results are the same. They invested their hard earned cash in high rate government bonds that the government is now saying that they are unable to pay the interest. The so called ‘Jamaica Debt Exchange Program’ put forward by the Bruce Golding led government is only an admission of government’s bankruptcy and its failure to honour legal and binding agreements entered into by the Jamaican government on behalf of the Jamaican people. The end result of this Debt Exchange Program is no different from what happened to investors in the alternative investment schemes, banks and other financial institutions and the investors that they represent will lose significant amount of interest ( J$40 Billion in the next fiscal year) if all goes as planned. You have been duped.
The real danger of this approach is the loss of credibility of the government. The fact that this Debt Exchange Program is aimed at domestic Investors makes no difference. All investors (foreign and local) will have to question whether the government can be trusted to abide by its commitments. Can you bank on the interest invested in government bonds? This `bright idea’ that the PSOJ and the JMA is endorsing leaves the government looking like a Ponsi scheme that is nearing its end.
Debt reorganization is nothing new; it is unusual however for government to beg investors to surrender their income. We will have to wait until mid February to see whether the first part of the plan works. The action taken by the government resembles the Chapter 11 reorganization under the Bankruptcy code used in the United States of America. ‘A Chapter 11 debtor usually proposes a plan of reorganization to keep its business alive and pay creditors over time.’ See WWW.UScourts.gov.
