The International Monetary Fund is making demands of The Bahamian Government after its recent Article IV Consultation.

According to Tribune Business some of the items piquing my interest are:

1. “A decisive shift in structural policies is needed to raise potential growth, estimated at only 1.5 per cent over the medium term, to improve competitiveness and reduce high structural and youth unemployment,”
2. “The authorities should finalise the plan and, acknowledging that it takes time for structural reforms to bear fruit, promptly move towards implementation. Focus should be on a comprehensive strategy aimed at diversifying the economy and lifting barriers to growth,”
3. “Policies should aim at improving productivity through better educational outcomes, further strengthening existing apprenticeship and vocational training programmes, easing restrictions on labour mobility and seeking to reverse the ‘brain drain’ of skilled Bahamians,”
4. “Reforms to improve the ease of doing business should focus on alleviating the administrative burden and time necessary to start a business; strengthening contract enforcement and frameworks for resolving insolvencies and registering property; and improving access to credit (including through prompt establishment of a Credit Bureau).”
5. “Efforts to streamline expenditures would also benefit from advancing on-going reforms to modernise the public financial management system, including strengthening internal controls, procurement practices, and Budget preparation and execution.
6. “Continued fiscal consolidation is critical for rebuilding fiscal and external policy buffers and boosting investor confidence,”
7. “The authorities should also review the efficiency of tax exemptions and concessions, including to the tourism sector, and consider simplifying domestic taxes that are not business-friendly.”

While my personal view is the IMF should be abolished, excessive government debt from local sources is bad enough, but had The Bahamas Government lived within its proverbial means and not borrowed so much money internationally and in particular from the IMF we would not have them here.

However, the seven points above make it quite clear there is a lot amiss in this archapealago.