The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

THE Bahamas Real Estate Association's (BREA) president yesterday said the Government was likely "right sizing" its projections for real estate-related Stamp Tax collections, given that this was projected to decline by almost $45 million year-over-year during the 2012-2013 fiscal period.

The Budget's estimates for real estate-related Stamp Tax revenues in 2012-2013 are just short of $113 million, well short of the $157 million projected by the Ingraham administration for 2011-2012, but Franon Wilson yesterday indicated that the Christie administration was likely adjusting its forecasts to more realistic levels.

"I don't understand how they expected to get where they projected last year, so the Government may be looking to right size before it moves forward," Mr Wilson told Tribune Business.

"The Government is taking steps to right size to where it really ought to have been before."

The Government's real estate-related Stamp Tax projections for 2012-2013 are more in line with the more than $122 million collected in 2009-2010, a year that coincided with the recession's peak.

They are well down, though, on the $166 million estimated to have been collected from real estate transactions in 2010-2011, a fiscal year when collections were likely buoyed by one-off transactions such as BORCO, Baha Mar and the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) sale.

Mr Wilson, though, said yesterday that he recalled that when the Ingraham administration took office in 2007, it made some aggressive projections for real estate-related Stamp Tax that he though unattainable at the time.

"They made projections, and I didn't understand it then, because during 2002-2007 the Government had done a lot to plug loopholes and a lot of things. I did not know where [the last government's] figures came from or how they arrived at them," the BREA president said.

Adding that the Government's real estate-related Stamp Tax estimates for 2012-2013 should not be taken as an indication that the Bahamian real estate market was declining, Mr Wilson added: "I would say that for the most part I get the sense we have hit rock bottom.

"I would not say we've shot back up at an alarming rate, but I get the sense that it's not the freefall it once was. So I do not see a sharp decline, especially with the steps the Government has taken to stimulate the sector. It will not happen overnight, but people have more assistance to go out and get people, and start more activity."