Nadaleen Singh

For the fifth con­sec­u­tive year, the op­er­at­ing prof­it of the ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies, par­ent com­pa­ny of Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed (GML), has ex­ceed­ed the $1 bil­lion mark.The group's 2014 fi­nan­cial re­sults, which were re­leased yes­ter­day, show that prof­it be­fore tax was $1,065,462 com­pared to $1,144,117 last year. In ad­di­tion, the group earned more than $6 bil­lion in rev­enue for the pe­ri­od end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2014, with the best per­for­mances from its au­to­mo­tive, trad­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tors.

Speak­ing at the re­lease of the group's lat­est fi­nan­cial re­sults, Group Chair­man and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive A Nor­man Sab­ga said the gains from the top per­form­ing sec­tors had off­set de­clines in man­u­fac­tur­ing, pack­ag­ing and brew­ing.Sab­ga said prof­it be­fore tax in the bank group de­clined by 23 per cent, main­ly due to weak re­turns in port­fo­lios.

Com­ment­ing on the labour prob­lems be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in the pri­vate sec­tor, Sab­ga said the group sees labour as one of its as­sets and has not ex­pe­ri­enced a short­fall in labour sup­ply. He said due to the na­ture, train­ing and the en­vi­ron­ment which com­pa­nies in the group of­fers, "it at­tracts the labour force" the group re­quires. Labour is a big in­vest­ment, he added, and over a "sus­tained" pe­ri­od the group has been set­tling ne­go­ti­a­tions at be­tween 9 and 12 per cent, so that in many of its com­pa­nies the wage bill is at the top of the mar­ket.

"We have done sur­veys which have shown in some of our in­dus­tries our wages are al­ready high­er than our peers. I don't think there is any rea­son why we would have to set­tle wage bills/new agree­ments at a lev­el that is high­er than the pre­vail­ing rate. I don't fore­see a prob­lem in that area un­less ex­pec­ta­tions be­come out of hand," he said.He al­so said the group had not been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the for­eign ex­change sup­ply prob­lems that have af­fect­ed many lo­cal busi­ness.

"We've been able to meet all of our com­mit­ments. We worked with all the banks. We have not re­neged on any for­eign ex­change pay­ments. From time to time there is a tight­ness in the mar­ket but we have been able to meet all our pay­ments."Al­though he did not give too many de­tails, Sab­ga con­firmed that GML's ra­dio di­vi­sion was about to launch a new sta­tion on the FM band.

He ex­plained: "We are clos­ing down the AM sta­tion (730 AM) and we have ac­quired an FM sta­tion. The FM sta­tion will fol­low the for­mat of the AM sta­tion. I don't want to take away their thun­der when they an­nounce it."

Mil­lions lost in road blocks

The ANSA McAL Group suf­fered heavy loss­es in Mon­day's "to­tal polic­ing" ex­er­cis­es when road­blocks across the coun­try caused mas­sive traf­fic grid­lock."We have lost mil­lions of dol­lars as well. Our dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies (could not op­er­ate), our trucks and ve­hi­cles could not leave the com­pound. We lit­er­al­ly lost a day's sales in terms of our dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny," Sab­ga saud.

"Our ex­ec­u­tives turned around and worked from Ch­agua­nas. There was a lev­el of dis­com­fort, those who made it to work, we had to let them go home ear­ly be­cause there was a con­cern that the same thing would hap­pen in the evening."