INSIDE — C Spire gets favorable Supreme Court ruling — Page 2 AUTOMOTIVE
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March 10, 2017 • Vo. 39. No. 10 • 24 pages
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
WEATHERLY – Nissan march: running on fumes — Page 3
MBJ DOUBLE FOCUS
Agribusiness {Section begins P11}
» Delta Council plays vital role » Cotton making comeback » Process begins in Congress on 2018 Farm Bill
Legislature drops key part of motion picture rebate package By JACK WEATHERLY jack.weatherly@msbusiness.com The bad news is that a key component in the Mississippi Motion Picture Incentive Program will fade to black after July 1. The good news is that the cash rebate on 25 percent of the salaries paid to nonresidents of Mississippi is the only part that was lost. Going into the current session of the Legislature, talk from the top was that, in a tight budgetary year, putting money into a “noncore” program was not prudent. A December 2015 study by the legislative Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review, or PEER, found that taxpayer investment in the industry returned only 49 cents for every dollar spent. Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker See REBATE, Page 8
UTILITIES
KEMPER PLANT FORCES MOODY’S DOWNGRADE Made in Mississippi {Section begins P16}
» C Spire trying new technology on high-speed broadband
{The List P18} » Manufacturers
By JACK WEATHERLY jack.weatherly@msbusiness.com
Moody’s Investors Service, a leading credit rating firm, has downgraded $800 million of Mississippi Power Co.’s debt securities because of continuing problems with the utility’s coal-gasification power plant in Kemper County. The downgrade means that future credit for the power company, which has about 186,000 customers in the state, stands to be more expensive.
Moody’s lowered the senior unsecured debt to non-investment grade from lower medium grade. The cost of building the power plant, which is to use the “syngas,” made from lignite, a low-grade coal in what the company says it has a 40-year supply near the site, to run the turbines that produce electricity, has risen $7 billion, from its original $2.9 billion projection. The project has “severely stressed the utility’s financial profile,” Moody’s said in a r elease recently. “The [integrated gasification combined cycle] plant
may not be economic to operate at all,” the report said. Mississippi Power started running the “clean-coal” plant on natural gas in August 2014 while awaiting completion of the gasification components. Two years later, Tom Fanning, chief executive and chairman of the parent Southern Co., described in a teleconference the plant as a “dual fuel investment.” Even if the original projected cost of building the See MOODY, Page 4
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