The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

FOLLOWING claims the government recovered nearly 6,000 acres of land by revising the I-Group's Mayaguana development project, PLP senator Michael Darville insisted the acres were never given away in the first place.

Speaking in the Senate yesterday, Tourism Minister Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace said under the newly revised agreement, 5,825 acres of land will be returned to "the patrimony of the people of the Bahamas".

He compared the recovery to "getting Little San Salvador back or getting Bimini back or getting Ragged Island back".

However according to Mr Darville, whose party was in power at the time of the original agreement, it "had nothing to do with selling Bahamian land" to a foreign group - as it was a joint venture.

"Therefore, it is certainly disingenuous to create the impression that the 5,825 acres of land was some how back into the hands of the people of Mayaguana for their own development. This undeveloped land never left the hands of the Bahamian people," Mr Darville said.

"The words of politicians can sometimes be dangerous and intentionally misleading... At no point in the agreement did the government give away any land, but simply went into a partnership with the I-Group to develop the land."

He said the joint-venture was to have involved both domestic and foreign investors and would have encouraged economic growth.

But Mr Vanderpool-Wallace said the government was clearly at "a considerable disadvantage" under the first deal.

Any benefits were "many, many years down the road if anything would be received at all", he said.

"If one were to examine the details of the joint venture arrangement, it would be a generation if at all, before the people of the Bahamas received any significant compensation from that agreement."

According to Mr Vanderpool-Wallace, in addition to recovering land, the amended agreement also dissolves the joint-venture.

Now, all business license fees will be paid by the developer, there is no 20-year exemption from duty payment on fuels, the development will start with 2,912 acres rather than 9,999, and the government will keep the $2 million from the original agreement and receive an extra $500,000 upon the dissolution of the joint-venture.

Both Mr Vanderpool-Wallace and Mr Darville announced their support of the revisions.