The Tribune

YESTERDAY marked the close of the Bahamas’ celebration of 40 years as an independent nation. As the 40-year chapter ended, Bahamians could look back on years marked by tremendous successes, equally tremendous failures, and a people who had lost their moral compass.

As we go forward as a nation, we are dragging the debilitating fall-out of the drug years with us — years that have left this nation with a growing crime problem and too many youth who would rather steal their way to the top than do an honest day’s labour.

In the 39th year, Bahamians elected a government that made many promises – two of which were that it had the sure-cure for crime and that within 100 days it could produce 10,000 jobs for Bahamians in need of employment. Time has shown that they were neither ready, nor did they have the tools to deal with the country’s two most pressing problems — crime and unemployment. Despite this, however, instead of getting down to the business at hand, wrong decisions are being made and the fingerpointing continues as they search for a scapegoat on which to saddle the blame.

The Christie government inherited a country already heavily in debt having suffered — with the rest of the world — an economic collapse. The new government proceeded to get the country further in debt by a botched gambling referendum at a cost of about a million, and what many considered an unsatisfactory audit into National Insurance, also in the region of a million.

The Labour Minister now talks of the need for a second audit into another aspect of NIB. These ministers, obviously devoid of all business sense, behave as though the Bahamas has a special money tree. If this is so, they would be well advised to water and fertilise it rather than constantly picking the fruit from its shrinking limbs.

In the House of Assembly last month, Hubert Chipman (FNM-St Anne’s) pointed out that in less than two years the PLP government has borrowed one billion dollars. The Bahamas is now $5.5 billion in debt. Already on the brink, a further push could send it crashing.

“The government claims to be pulling us out of a spiralling debt, they inherited from the previous administration,” said Mr Chipman, “yet they propose to do so by increasing borrowing. Indeed, $1bn in borrowing over a two-year period represents the largest increase in government borrowings in the Bahamas ever.”

At times like these, the private sector — the backbone of any stable economy — should be encouraged to expand to create jobs. Instead, government – in a supposed tax free country — has added taxes to almost any and everything that is taxable.

Instead of consulting with the business community, it has ladled out taxes that have caused many business owners to pull down their shutters while they consider how to cut costs.

If Deputy Prime Minister Davis is to produce his promised 10,000 jobs, the answer would be to offer incentives to expand the job market, not to shrink it by burdensome taxes.

It is obvious that there is not a sound business head sitting around that Cabinet table. It is true that taxes will bring in revenue. But has anyone thought of the possible ramifications if businesses start to contract rather than expand, if hotels cannot fill their rooms without airlift to bring in the guests, and the immediate rise in the cost of living when prices start to go up because freighters no longer want to service our ports?

We wager that not one cabinet member expected the airlines to jointly decide to cut their services if commonsense did not prevail among the leaders of this country.

Not only have the airlines, representing 90 per cent of US airlift into the Bahamas, warned that they may cut their services due to the Budget’s tax increases, but Crowley shipping has announced that after 19 years of carrying freight to the Bahamas from Jacksonville it will cease operations because of government’s “unsustainable” cost increases. Its last sailing from Port Everglades will be on August 6. Contractors are worried that with Crowley gone they will face another 10 per cent increase in construction materials. One can only guess how this could cripple the construction business. (See article by Neil Hartnell in today’s Business).

As for the airlines, their threat could undermine the industry’s plans to aim for a 400,000-seat increase to fill the Bahamas’ hotel rooms now coming on stream.

None of this fall-out probably even entered into the minds of our leaders when they sat to deliberate on how they could go on spending, while taxing the people to underwrite the expenses.

Even Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe has admitted that imposition of the processing fee, which has caused the threatened cutback from US airlines, is an implication that the economy cannot afford.

Mr Wilchcombe admitted in the House of Assembly when the new taxes were announced, that government had not met with the airlines before the taxes were announced.

“If they are informing us that the increase affects them negatively,” Mr Wilchcombe said, “and could cause them to pull out of servicing the Bahamas, then certainly we would have to sit down and talk with them and see what their concerns are.”

It is shocking to think that no one in government when making a decision that could destroy our tourist industry would not consider it essential to discuss the matter with the very industry that could overnight remove the bread and butter from every table in this country.

As a Bahamian commented last night: “How can this nation suffer four more years of this government’s bungling?”

Remember in 1992 it was the Ingraham government that had to restore the tourism industry to profitability and respectability on the world stage. But if this continues will there be anything left to be restored in 2017?

It is past time for Mr Christie to pick up the reigns, surround himself with sensible advisers and start to govern the Bahamas for the good of all Bahamians.