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Archive -Seychelles

Government not selling tankers |18 December 2013

The government will lose a lot of money if it sells some of its tankers now and after exploring all possible options it has found that it is best to keep them all for the time being.

The Minister for Finance, Trade and Investment Pierre Laporte gave these details in the National Assembly yesterday while he was clarifying a point on the issue raised by the leader of the opposition David Pierre in his budget reply.

Mr Pierre had asked the minister to clarify the government’s position with regard to the country’s fleet of tankers.

“With a positive perspective following the debt restructuring and the fact that we will lose a considerable sum of money, the government finds it best to keep the tankers for now,” said Mr Laporte.

He noted that from 2003 until 2008 the tankers were making profit; between 2005 to 2007 on average US $5 million per annum. But in 2009, following the economic crisis in Europe, the fleet made a loss of US $8.8 million.

The situation has continued to worsen since with a continuous loss and last year the fleet recorded its biggest loss – US $15 million.

The situation improved this year with the expected loss predicted to be US $11 million.

“Following the government’s decision this year to restructure the tankers’ debt and transfer their management to another company, we are predicting that in 2014 the situation should improve in an important way where a small profit is expected if the world economic situation does not deteriorate,” Minister Laporte informed the Assembly.

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