Watch those State funds

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Proper governance structures need to be in place at all enterprises funded by taxpayers, including one like Caribbean Airlines (CAL), to avoid situations where these companies have to write off major debts, business leaders have said. “In the private sector, you can’t be making mistakes that allow for these types of discrepancies for these mistakes. At the end of the day, management and the board of directors should be making wise decisions, especially with State funds. There shouldn’t be a situation where these sorts of significant losses are being incurred. “In the private sector, this sort of thing would not be happening, or if it did, someone would have to stand the responsibility for it and probably the end result would be someone losing their jobs,” chief executive of the Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers’ Association Ramesh Ramdeen told the Express in an interview on Monday. He was responding to the reports in the Sunday Express about a potential $200 million debt write-off for State carrier CAL after alleged mismanagement by top executives on cargo revenues and credit card payments.