The government has made a further investment of £5 million into the Steam Packet Company.

Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan has written to Tynwald members regarding the one-off payment, which is designed to address the commercial impact of the coronavirus pandemic while the company continued to maintain essential lifeline services.

This follows a reported loss of £10.5m in 2020.

Mr Cannan said: ’The Steam Packet has provided a vital service required by our island and its economy throughout this difficult period, and yet the company did not claim government support despite a substantial impact in terms of lost income.

’The maintenance of these services has come at a cost to the company, above that which it may have incurred had it operated services on purely commercial grounds.

’To ensure that the company has sufficient working capital to meets its identified short-term needs and to protect this important government asset the Council of Ministers have agreed that, on this occasion, the most appropriate means of funding is through an additional equity investment of £5m.’

refinancing

In June, Mr Cannan sought parliamentary approval to issue bonds to raise £160 million for refinancing the SPC.

He said it was ’always the intention that the Steam Packet took on an appropriate debt structure to pay for both the Manxman cost of £80m and to repay a government loan of £76m’, which the bond issue was intended to facilitate.

This year the government has become embroiled in high-profile disputes with the company over the cost of the new ferry terminal in Liverpool, and the involvement of SPC staff in February’s covid outbreak, which led to the March lockdown.

Chief Minister Howard Quayle stopped short of a full independent investigation into the outbreak, which he said arose from a ’genuine misunderstanding’ over isolation rules for island-based crew.

More recently in May, SPC chairman Lars Ugland criticised the design of the Liverpool terminal in a letter to Infrastructure Minister Tim Baker, saying that the government was responsible for costs of the project running over (by at least 13 million), not the SPC.