City Hall, NICIL at loggerheads

Oct 02, 2010 News

The Mayor and City Council of Georgetown (M&CC) and the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) seem to be at loggerheads. The issue is rates and taxes owed by NICIL and its subsidiaries.
Mayor Hamilton Green contends that NICIL owes the municipality in excess of $100M and seems unwilling to fully honour its obligation.
In fact, at an emergency meeting at City Hall on Thursday, the mayor and councillors together raised concerns about the state of affairs. The meeting was prompted by the content of a letter inked by Executive Director of NICIL, Mr Winston Brassington, which addressed the rates and taxes matter.
The letter which was addressed to Acting City Treasurer, Andrew Meredith, and carbon copied to Minister of Finance, Ashni Singh; Mr Keith Burrowes and Deputy Mayor Robert Williams, made reference to meetings that were held between officials of NICIL and the municipality.
In the letter dated September 24, 2010, Brassington stated that the intent was to formally document the way forward as was agreed to at two recent meetings held between the two parties.
Stating NICIL’s position, Brassington detailed that current legal action by the M&CC against NICIL for outstanding rates and taxes for mud-lot 2 (a) of Lombard Street pending the outcome of the IFI/GNIC legal matter be frozen (or preferably withdrawn). Additionally, Brassington noted in the letter that “NICIL would be grateful for an undertaking that (i) this matter will not be addressed in court at a later date until the resolution of the IFI/GNIC matter and (ii) no payments for attorney’s fees will be applicable.”
He noted that NICIL would be grateful if the council could draft and forward a settlement agreement. However it was asserted by Brassington that for properties owned by NICIL, the entity will pay the net balance following the offsetting process.
For this purpose, he said, NICIL on this occasion will add GNCB/PHI and PHI. This will be subjected to: NICIL overpayments being used for further rates and taxes payments on said properties; receipts being issued for amounts previously paid totalling $39,800,095 (representing separate lump sum amounts of $25M, $4,800,095 and $10M respectively).
It was further asserted that NICIL will pay on a one-off basis for PHI properties which are currently the subject of legal actions. And once the specified allocation is applied and NICIL is issued receipts per same, “we will write a cheque for our outstanding balance,” Brassington noted.
But according to the City Mayor, having perused the correspondence “we are disappointed they are not yet coming around to a just and equitable proposal.” He refrained from commenting further on the matter but related that the municipality has already started to ink a letter in response to NICIL.

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City Hall, NICIL at loggerheads

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