Rick Lowe
The Bahamas economy is very weak. The banks are shell-shocked, and not lending to businesses that need cash to tide them through hard times. Unemployment is high, business is bad, the benefit bill is growing and tax revenues have shrunk.
Public spending does not stimulate growth. It merely takes cash from where investors think it will create mid and long-term returns and puts it where politicians think they will get the best short-term political return.
We cannot afford to put off the evil day. We don’t even have to lose our AAA credit status. If foreign rating agencies are right and foreign investors just start avoiding us as too risky, then they will demand a better return on their money, and our debt interest, will become unsustainable. Then we will be off to the IMF once more.
Those words are paraphrased from this article by Dr. Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, but they are certainly an appropriate representation of our economy.
So what should the Bahamas government do?
For starters, adding more bureaucracy and welfare programmes that will force more borrowing and taxation on citizens in the future is not a good idea, and the government needs to restore the business communities confidence in their policy direction (pdf).
Maybe one way to encourage employment would be to rescind the Employment Act so employers might hire people temporarily to "help" so they're not constrained by the future charges as a result of the severance clauses etc of the law.
An additional approach would be for the country to send a clear signal to the international community that The Bahamas is a good place to invest. Get the Atlantis and Albany folks on board as well.
One thing for sure, it looks like we're stuck with a rotten economy for several more months and the more open our economy becomes, the better prospects there are for future economic growth to help get us out of this mess.
But with clear signals that the government will get out of the way, and stick to their guns, optimism might return to the business community and the banks, and thereby shorten the recession.
You are so right Rick. I think they should off-load BEC, Bahamas Air,BTC, ZNS, etc, ASAP ! I don’t know about you, but with me, the longer I do something, the better I get at it. This is NOT true with all of the above.This would remove a huge load off the people. I am sick & tired of all of this government waste when I’m told that the police do not even have a plane !
Or a Helicopter.
Don’t get me started.
If things are going to recover, and I say if,
in the next 2-6 months, or 1-2-5-10 years, then “policy” should have been changed yesterday, or the day before.
As of this evening, nothing has changed.
Embracing a logical, rational game plan isn’t in evidence either.
As always though, we have the control mentality as ever present in every level of the Civil service and political hoarde.
Quo Vadis, Bahamas?
I just do not understand why there seems to be absolutely NO common sense in the government at all, FNM & PLP.There needs to be a priority check.Common sense tells you to “Fix” the so called judicial system before you do anything else, anything period.That should be a number one priority, what are they afraid of, doing the right thing ? These politicians need to stop thinking that we are all a bunch of idiots.Why is it that they can find money for anything else, with the exception of the right things like the courts ? Why are they letting us be controlled by a band of thugs ? It is very clear to me that Mr.Turnquest can not handle his job.We need a very strong person in charge of the Police.Why does our PM not see this & why does he leave him in charge ? It baffles me.These politicians seem to be concerned about all the wrong things like making sure their picture gets in the paper.Maybe its me but I was brought up to do the right thing.We need to rid ourselves of these un-necessary burdens like ZNS,BEC,BTC,Bahamas Air etc.Why do they continue, are they so concerned about votes that in controls the common sense nerves ?These are tax burdens that would free up a whole lot of money for the right things.It seems to me that the politicians are living in a different world from me.
I agree DP, when the Judiciary goes to pot, it is felt by the citizenry from the bottom up, and inevitably it will undermine the political leadership itself.
But, it snowballs.
We now have political leadership which itself has discarded the juciciary, arbitrarily doing what it pleases.
The lawlessness which we endure, is born in the hearts and minds of ordinary people, who simply follow the example of leadership in order to survive.
Literally,
They know not what to do.
One big bunch of blinded idiots
The people in the Bahamas is getting sick and dying from STRESS and related sickness. The problems in the Bahamas falls on the Authority of this nation.
Our most important priorities:
(1) Build a new hospital in the most central part of New Providence.
(2) Build a new Court system with enough judges.
(3) Build a new prison/penitentiary similar to fort knock on another island.
(4) Build some exercising Gym with some professional trainer to teach people how to stay healthy. This will prevent about 60% of the sickness. It would cause the government to save millions of dollars that would have been allotted for medication, then the bahamas would start to get some healing.
If all of these priority are dealt with immediatly we would start to recovered in the Bahamas.