A friend said yesterday that The Bahamas is a country that is “overwhelmed”. I suggested stronger language and he quickly pointed out we are not there yet.
He’s right. There may be a chance to start to right the ship of state and a good place to start would be improving the standings in the Doing Business Index of The World Bank.
In the latest ranking, in a long list of bad news, The Bahamas has slipped from 120th place in 2016 to 121st place out of 190 countries in 2017.
While some would suggest the former FNM administration was more Business friendly than the present PLP Government, I would argue the FNM might understand the importance of the entrepreneur and were not as vocal with their anti-business comments as the PLP, but the track record is there for all to see.
More importantly, the economy of The Bahamas cannot be allowed to slide even further into the doldrums, and one way to counter that is to encourage businesses and entrepreneurs. Not in rhetoric but in deeds.
One way to help with an economic recovery is to provide an environment where business people/entrepreneurs can flourish.
As Ms. Magatte Wade pointed out in a recent presentation here for the Foundation of Economic Education:
“If we agree that poverty will be fixed by job creation, and job creation comes about through entrepreneurship, then don’t you think that we should focus all that we have as a country on entrepreneurship , those entrepreneurs, those company creators? Don’t you think we should make it easy for he or she to create a company in the first place and run it?”
Hopefully the government of The Bahamas will begin to see how they have hamstrung business and entrepreneurs, with their public policies, to the detriment of economic growth and start to reverse this dangerous trend.
There is obviously no quick fix, but the government can make it a whole lot worse with their continued choice of bad public policies.
Read the Doing Business Index information about The Bahamas here… You can also download the more extensive report there.
