The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island is considering reopening around the Thanksgiving holiday in late November, according to a July 24 Tribune article. This is yet another devastating development for Nassau, as that mega resort, the largest private sector employer in The Bahamas, employs upwards of 8,000 Bahamians. Another mega resort, Baha Mar, also has plans on restructuring, announcing that it will reopen in October. The Tribune reported that the resort was aiming on making redundant between 15 - 20 percent of its approximately 5,500 employees, which would be about 1,000 job cuts. The British Colonial Hilton laid off 30 of its staff members in June, also due to the crippling impact on tourism caused by COVID-19. On July 21 Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis announced to the nation that Grand Bahama would be subjected to a two-week lockdown in order to curb the novel coronavirus.

Industrial companies such as Buckeye Bahamas, Polymers International, PharmaChem Technologies, Bahama Rock, Bradford Bahamas, Bahamas Industrial Technologies, Grand Bahama Shipyard Limited, Grand Bahama Power Company, Grand Bahama Utility Company, Freeport Container Port, to name a few, are exempted from the state sanctioned quarantine. Many of the Bahamians on these jobs, especially those in management, make more money than probably over 75 percent of the lawyers and doctors in Nassau. With the virtual nonexistence of stopover tourism on Grand Bahama since the closure of the Royal Oasis Resort and Casino in 2004, Freeport’s industrial sector has cushioned the blow of any economic fallout Grand Bahama otherwise would have experienced had it not been for the foregoing multimillion-dollar industrial entities. I am not downplaying the decades old recession in Grand Bahama, mind you. Grand Bahamians are accustomed to empty hotels; Nassauvians aren’t. I believe that Grand Bahama is in a much better position to weather the COVID-19 recession than Nassau, which heavily relies on tourism. Accounting for nearly 50 percent of the Bahamian gross domestic product, tourism’s importance to the economy cannot be overstated.

Unlike Grand Bahama, Nassau has no industrial sector to fall back on. COVID-19 has utterly exposed Nassau’s economic vulnerability, which has placed thousands of hotel workers, taxi cab drivers, tour bus operators, jet ski operators, hair braiders, restaurant and straw vendors in dire straits economically.

Rather than diversify Nassau’s economy, successive governments simply built on the foundation Sir Stafford Sands laid in tourism. Apparently, many of our leaders lacked innovation. Making matters worse is the fact that a large portion of the tourism sector is owned by wealthy foreigners.

Wallace Groves, the founder of Freeport, envisaged a city with a strong industrial sector coupled with a vibrant tourism industry. Unlike successive governments which had dumped all of Nassau’s eggs into one basket, which is tourism, Groves had the foresight to diversify Freeport’s economy. He was a man ahead of his time.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama.

July 27, 2020.