Very poor display of analytical skills by local financial analyst on Petro Caribe deal

It has been almost three weeks since the GOJ announced it had arrived at a deal to buy back Petro Caribe debt at a discount of about 50%. (I used the word about advisably).

Since the announcement, there has been a lot of opinion being promulgated by all and sundry on the merits of the deal.

We have had financial people on interviews giving their opinion of the deal albeit without the requisite calculations to support their point.

After all this time, we have had only one financial analysts penning a report about the deal with actual numbers, but Ralston choose to do his calculations in Jamaican dollars, thus confusing the issue even further.

Up to this point in time, no two analyst has arrived at the same conclusion and show actual figures to prove their position. The conclusions range from a stroke of genius in the deal, to one of being a bad and costly mistake by the government, how can this be ?

What I have seen been passed on as rigorous financial analysis is  not only shameful, its a total embarrassment to the financial profession and leads me to really question the capabilities  of the local financial analysts.

I have seen financial analyst who appears to have created their own version of financial modeling to arrive at a number that supports or justifies their position. So what happens is they choose a position, then run a set of numbers to support their initial position, which is not only unethical under Certified Financial Analyst ( CFA) charter, but grossly dishonest and self serving.

In the absence of good financial analysis a local pastor  Rev Garnet Roper decided to get involved and did his only calculations to support his position, that this debt buy back is a stroke of genius.

I am not only very disappointed that the local financial experts have failed the country miserably and once again and take issue with those at the University of the West Indies, University of Technology and the UCC who have all collectively failed the Jamaican people once again and have left the political hacks to control the numbers and spurt garbage to the people, while calling it financial analysis.

Frankly, I am disappointed to the core about the farce that have been presented so far under the guise financial analysis and reinforces  my position, that this country is made of too many intellectually dishonest people, who are self serving and are doing great disservice to the country.

Last week Ralton Hyman wrote that the PDF is set to generate in the region of $13b and so would be in a position to service the debt, but in today’s Gleaner the man in charge of the PDF, Dr Wesley Hughes was of a completely different view. His position is that the $4b that is going to be removed from the fund, would not allow the PDF to generate the income it was projected to, at the start of the fiscal year. Yet another contradiction, by gosh its numbers we are working with not an opinion based project

The daily newspapers have given some people  the freedom to push their flawed financial calculations, flawed reasoning and incorrect conclusion  on the people and those professors who lectures in these fields and who are supposed to be proficient and are training the next batch of financial gurus, remains silent, fails to challenge the info and in so doing allows incorrect information to be disseminated around the country.

It really begs the question, what is really being taught to our students at the local universities.

You tell me how irresponsible is that !

Is this what we can now come to expect ?