Date First Published January. 29. 1991

By Sharief Khan

AFTER several postponments, the US Virgin Islands-based ATN telephone company yesterday closed the deal to immediately take over the running of the local telecommunications network.

ATN (Atlantic Tele-Network) Chairman, Mr Jeffrey Prosser, told reporters here his firm has paid government US$16.5M for 80 per cent of the shares in the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTTC) which replaces the former state-owned Guyana Telecom-munication Corporation (GTC).

The deal should have been closed several months ago but Prosser denied difficulties by ATN to raise the finance held up the arrange­ments. He said the money for ATN to take over the US$10.5M three-year expansion programme planned by the Northern Telecoms company of Canada, had been in place for about eight weeks.

The delay was due, he said, to “complexities” linked with government passing new laws to allow ATN participation and the transferring of assets, among other preliminaries.

The GTTC General Manager for up to about the first year of the ATN deal will be Mr Jim Keane, a Vice-President with the company. Former GTC head, Mr Michael Welch, will be a Deputy General Manager in charge of coordinating “operation­al procedures”, Prosser announced at a Pegasus Hotel press conference.

The accounting and finance departments of the new entity will be directly under ATN con­trol, he added.

Prosser said there will be “noticeable” improve­ments in the poor exist­ing telephone system in about two months, especially with overseas calls.

Mr Chris Bryan, in charge of the three-year expansion programme, said the immediate plan is to update densely populated sections of the city and people who had long been waiting for telephone connections, would be asked to reapp­ly.

The first batch of 220 public pay phones which are to be installed over the three years has ar­rived here and these will be put down almost im­mediately, the ATN offi­cials promised.

Bryan said the num­ber of overseas circuits will be increased through satellite links and there are plans to link the main population centres around the country, as well as important hinterland mining com­munities.

Prosser does not an­ticipate any laying off with the new entity, ar­guing that there will not be any overstaffing with the “tremendous demand” for telephones.

The ATN Chairman said rates will remain un­changed for the first three years except for devaluation and changes in accounting rates from overseas companies with which Guyana deals.

The firm has acquired political risk insurance for its investments here from the US Overseas Private Investment Cor­poration (OPIC), which insures American over­seas businesses against political and other risks.

VCT now beaming to West Berbice

The television relay station which was recently installed at Drill, Mahaicony by Vieira Communications Television (VCT) is now fully operational and beaming to homes as far away as Rosignol, West Coast Berbice.

Tony Vieira, head of VCT, said he is so far pleased with the performance of the station and that the response from residents towards this venture has “not been bad.”

Work on the relay sta­tion, the first on the East Demerara and West Ber­bice area, started around the middle of last year and was completed before year end. Vieira had earlier said he had hoped to provide a television service to resi­dents living along the coast before Christmas, 1990. However, due to technical difficulties, the service could not have been introduced then.

According to a source at the relay station, VCT overcame the problems earlier this year and an uninterrupted service was put in place.

He also said that before the introduction of the relay service, several residents in areas now serviced by VCT, had to plant television antennas on 100-foot high poles in an effort to attract signals from VCT’s station on the West Bank Demerara at Versailles. In most cases, whenever the signals were attracted, the reception was very poor. With VCT’s relay sta­tion, antennas will only need to be raised on poles 30 feet high at the most, he explained.

Meanwhile, Vieira disclosed that he hopes to beam to the Corentyne up to Springlands this weekend with the com­pletion of a relay station at Blairmont, West Coast Berbice.

Mayor raps with City workers

City Mayor Compton Young held a rap session Saturday morning at the Saint Stanislaus College for City Council employees.

Young was in a humorous mood demonstrating some of his observations and highlighting complaints brought to him against Council employees.

Several employees later aired their views, put forward ideas and made comments.

Above is a section of the large crowd. (Inset is Mayor Young).

Cambio rates near pre-Xmas high

THE US dollar is now trading close to its pre-Christmas high selling rate of G$103 to US$1 as

speculation grows as to when the local currency will be devalued to bring the official rate closer to

the parallel rate.

One business source says that the impending devaluation will catalyse a rise in the cambio rate

because the US$ and other hard currencies will be bought up as a stop gap investment. This, says the source, will create excessive demand. The expected devaluation is already causing a shortage of US dollars on the local market, especially on ‘Wall St.’ On Monday morning, dealers on ‘Wall St.’ reported that there were very few cus­tomers selling currency.

Yesterday, the Na­tional Bank of Industry and Commerce was sell­ing US dollars at G$102.75 for transac­tions under G$25M while it was buying at $100.50. The Guyana Bank for Trade and In­dustry was selling at $101 and buying at $99 while Martina’s Cambio was trading the US dollar at $102 and buying at $101.50. Dealers on ‘Wall St’ were offering competitive rates, selling the US$ at G$102 to US$1.

Before Christmas, the value of the US$ reached record levels trading at G$103 to US$1. This was followed by a slump during the Christmas season when the US$ sold for around G$96 to US$1. Analysts at­tributed this decline in value to increased in­flows at Christmas time from overseas Guyanese and large purchasers staying out of the market. The value of the US$ has however inched steadily upwards over the past two weeks. (A.P.)