by HAYDN GILL

THE FINANCES of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) are starting to look up.

After years of successive losses and an accumulated deficit of US$15 million, the regional governing body is poised to make a profit.

Unaudited financial statements for the year ended September 30, 2006, revealed a surplus of revenue over expenditure to the tune of US$800 000.

The profit comes against the background of a significant loss of US$6.6 million the previous year.

While managing to increase its revenue streams with income from the 2003 World Cup, the WICB managed to reduce its expenses due to cost-cutting exercises with cuts in salaries, travel, telecommunications, marketing, public relations and domestic tournaments.

"The turnaround owes a lot to the focus and emphasis we have given to reviewing our cost base with real intensity," WICB chief financial officer Barry Thomas told WEEKENDSPORT from his offices in St John's, Antigua, yesterday.

"Our finance committee took a hard look at budgets for the year. We had to forgo a lot of expenditure. We certainly achieved cost savings. To top it off, we had income from the recent tri-nation series [in Malaysia] and recoveries from amounts we had not budgeted for."

One was a claim by the executive board of the International Cricket Council that resulted in revenue to the WICB from the 2003 World Cup in South Africa.

WICB president Ken Gordon highlighted the 2006 profit as one of the highlights of the board during the last year during an address yesterday to the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica in Kingston.

"It is important you understand how far we have gone to help ourselves and that even with such progress, we are far from being out of the woods," Gordon said.

"Fortunately, there have been some significant developments in recent times – developments which would not have occurred without the demonstrated progress which has been made."

haydngill@nationnews.com