The Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) is in the red with debt said to have skyrocketed over the $300-million mark. But despite the increasing problem, Treasurer Garfield Sinclair believes things are looking positive for the future.

“As you know, I don’t like to and I don’t think it is wise to discuss the specifics of numbers in the public with respect to finances,” Sinclair told the Jamaica Observer.

“We have always been in the red. Figures will continue to be bandied around and that is fine,” said Vice-President Sinclair.

“But the numbers — the actual revenue is challenged and continues to be challenged, and what we had to do was cut our expenses to sort of cut the suit to fit the cloth that we have,” he explained.

“But what I will say, though, the process of receiving funding has got way more stringent. We actually were the subject of a FIFA-commissioned audit into our operations that concluded recently, that gave us again a clean bill of health,” he noted.

In 2012 it was reported that the JFF had debt soaring over $200m, and five years on things have got worse for the cash-strapped administration.

“So we have had negative equity and we get by because we extend payables. We obviously have to engage in acute working capital management because payables always exceed the cash coming in, so you have to extend them,” Sinclair noted.

He continued: “You have to rely on the forbearance of your creditors or bankers help us out a bit with respect to funding facilities that we avail ourselves of and repay in the future.

“And frankly, given the state of our finances and the size of our finance department, I think we have done an excellent job of keeping creditors at bay, remaining a credible organisation and institution… filing all of the returns, because there is a tendency when you have financial fortunes like ours to not comply with the reporting requirements. We are up to date,” he added.

It has been 19 years since Jamaica’s senior men’s football team played in a World Cup, and that Sinclair believes is paramount to the federation’s growing debt.

“As you know small federations like ours live or die by the fortune of the senior national men’s team,” said Sinclair.

“Its fortunes drive the finances for the entire programme. The dozen of men’s and women’s age group programmes that make up the Jamaica Football Federation,” he pointed out.

“We are out of World Cup qualification activity through the rest of this year and obviously in the next, and so that has made our fortune and our capacity to generate sponsorship difficult. That has challenged it quite a bit and will challenge it right through to the next qualification,” he noted.

“So we had to make do with what is available from old sponsorships that will expire at the end of the 2018 World Cup year,” said Sinclair.

But things are looking positive for the JFF, having complied with new and stringent FIFA and CONCACAF guidelines for funding.

“Under the new [FIFA] President [Gianni] Infantino, [there is] a process now of applying for development funding that is a bit more rigourous, a bit more structured and stringent, but affords you more money if you are in compliance,” said Sinclair.

“We will have to avail ourselves of that additional funding as well to help get us through,” he added.

Sinclair, who on January 1, 2017 was appointed as president, Caribbean for Cable & Wireless Communications, where he has responsibility for operations in 15 territories across the region, explained that the JFF is still benefitting from funding through the FIFA Gold Project.

Sinclair, one of three JFF vice-presidents, told the Observer that plans are afoot to develop new sources of revenue, hence the hiring of Sophia Harris-Lau, a senior marketing representative.

“She is very experienced, has been in the business of developing opportunities for start-up businesses, and will bring that kind of talent into communicating with sponsors,” said Sinclair.

“We are as hopeful as ever about our ability to develop the new areas of revenue. But at the end of the day it not going to change. So at the end day we just have to get that [senior national men’s] team better. We can’t run from that,” he noted.

“We will have to become more of a perennial contender for qualification to the World Cup and indeed qualify for the World Cup.

“If that team gets better and better and gets to where we want them to go, we are not going to have to worry about financing,” he reiterated.