C.G.A. Proceeds to Annual General Meeting with Audited Financials

Henry Anderson

Turning to developments in the agriculture sector…. The Annual General Meeting of the Citrus Growers Association planned for January twenty-first, 2017, is a crossroads in the survival of the multi-million dollar industry. The industry has been suffering from in-fighting between larger growers aligned with Belize Citrus Mutual and medium and smaller growers still loyal to the C.G.A. Some of the C.G.A.’s members including a former chairman, in November, requested a special general meeting to discuss its in-house financial statements for the period 2012 to 2016, as well as disclosure of its Revolving Fund Account for the same length of time.  They also called for accountability of the current state of C.G.A.’s shareholding in Citrus Products of Belize Limited. But the meeting planned for November twenty-sixth never came off because quorum was not achieved. The Association now plans to present the completed audited statements at the AGM. C.G.A. C.E.O. Henry Anderson gave us an update today.

Henry Anderson, C.E.O., Citrus Growers Association

“The audit is completed; if you look in terms of some of those asking about debt in there, the debt in the CGA has gone down by thirteen million dollars in the three-year period that the Annual General Report does; plus we have now Plant World Nursery, which is our largest asset and newest asset that the Association has over that time.”

Reporter

“And the last audit was conducted when?”

Henry Anderson

“What had happened, our last audit was 2013, and CPBL missed two. And at the time they were still a subsidiary, so we waited for them to complete, and when they completed then we had to do three. So the three of them have been done, and the Annual General Meeting will be on the twenty-first of January.”

The C.G.A. has been described elsewhere as “bankrupt” and “mismanaged,” in dire need of funds to plant new groves and unable to pay its existing debts. Industry insiders dismiss this as another example of the long-standing in-fighting.