National Bus Company Reports Financial Improvement After Difficult Start

After struggling during its initial months of operation, the National Bus Company (NBC) is reporting two fruitful months. Financial Advisor Emil Pineda presented the company’s financial summary at yesterday’s press conference in Belmopan, outlining its performance as it works toward long-term sustainability.  The improvement follows a difficult start for the NBC, which began operations in March. Pineda also explained the strategies the company plans to pursue to sustain that progress and strengthen its financial position.

Emil Pineda, Financial Advisor, NBC: “Revenues have exceeded the projections that we had anticipated and the banks have even given us a call to say you’re depositing too much money, which is a good thing. It shows us the financial viability of NBC and that the investment is safe. As of July and August, as you can tell, the income was 1.5% above what we had budgeted for. Expenses for NBC are 14.6% below what we had budgeted for during that period. I can say for sure we reduced the net loss that we had projected in the first couple months by increasing and tightening the different areas. Expenses have remained below the budget for sure. The implementation of financial policy is one of the key components that will bring NBC to another stage. As you could see the presentation from Mr. Verde today highlighted areas of technology, the HR component, the operations component. It’s all a symbiotic relationship and the financial aspect is a very key. The Accounts Department prides itself in working very hard and long hours. As you can tell, we have even implemented a digitized payroll system that issues pay slips to staff. Your monies are safe, your deductions for Social Security are safe and they are paid timely. As you can see earlier, have implemented and we are working to implement a digitized revenue tracking. By the presentation that Mr. Verde made, as you could tell, that system will also allow us to track revenues on a real-time basis. We have someone in-house as we speak that does specifically that and tracks revenues on a full-time basis. That’s how serious this business is for us. NBC has maintained its compliance and prides itself with maintaining compliance with the Belize Tax Department and its requirements, and also its statutory obligations and remittances. NBC, in the last couple months, has seen its fair share of improvements. The company has made a major breakthrough in such a short bit of time. There were several operational hiccups that came along and NBC had to incur those costs for it to be able to support the continuance of services. We have been able to successfully confirm that there are two months in this year alone that NBC has provided a net profit for its operation in just a short time.”