The Tribune

WHEN Dr Duane Sands gave his assessment of how many more people need to get vaccinated to benefit the nation – a number very different from that given by his successor as Health Minister – we saluted him for being a plain talker.

It’s very easy to come out and say the things that people want to hear. It’s very different to come out and say the things that people need to hear.

In today’s Tribune, you can read his words as he once again tells us what we need to hear, this time on the issue of our country’s debt crisis.

There’s no secret about the situation we are in. We were in debt even before the twin blows of Hurricane Dorian and COVID-19 hit the nation. As Dr Sands put it yesterday of our current situation, “We have a sovereign debt crisis.”

What he warned us against is what we should always avoid doing – putting our heads in the ground and pretending the problem doesn’t exist.

He said: “Let us, as the old people say, ‘claim it’. Find where the bodies are buried at BMC (Bahamas Mortgage Corporation), BOB (Bank of The Bahamas), BDB (Bahamas Development Bank), BA (Bahamasair), BPL (Bahamas Power and Light).

“Let us look at our unbooked pension liabilities, write it down. All of our accrued vacation leave. Let us speak openly about the state of the NIB fund and the challenged ability to provide benefits beyond 2028-2033 as the most recent actuarial reviews confirm.”

What Dr Sands says makes sense. We can’t talk about fixing a problem until we actually look at the extent of it. We need to stop turning a blind eye to the bills being run up by state-owned enterprises, we need to stop the pot being drained by favours to the politically connected, and we need to get our house in order. Many of these problems were in place before Dorian and COVID-19 – those calamities simply exposed how fragile our systems are.

That’s the first part of the equation – figuring out where the problems are. The second one is what to do about it. You know yourself from your household finances that when you’re in a hole, you can either cut your costs or try to raise more funds, and it’s no different for public finances.

To raise more, we’re talking taxes. Dr Sands raises the question himself, saying we may even have to implement an income tax. As he says: “Let us reassess the tax structure of The Bahamas to meet the annual funding needs of the government. If it requires income tax… let’s do it voluntarily before somebody else makes us do it.”

What the solution to the second part is remains up in the air – there are certainly pressures on us internationally for tax reform. But the first part is perhaps more important still. We cannot know how much money we need to raise until we know how much money we are losing. We need to stop it draining out of our leaky systems, and build a more robust society. It’s your money that’s draining away, it’s your money that will disappear from your pocket to replace it in taxes. Let’s find out where it’s going – and not stick our head in the sand any longer.

Fly, fly, fly

Just when we need tourists to start coming back, what do we have? Prices of flights are apparently so high that they could be putting people off.

We have more demand for flights than there is availability, which in one sense is good that the demand is there, as Robert Sands, the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association head, notes is “a good problem to have.”

But it doesn’t help in bringing more people here to spend that money in our stores, our bars and with our vendors.

If the demand is there, let’s meet it with increased supply. Put on more flights. Get people here. We’ve waited long enough for this opportunity, let’s not waste it by having overpriced flights because there aren’t enough planes in the air.