The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas’ inability to generate economic growth over the past decade is “a recipe for economic and social disaster”, a Cabinet Minister warned yesterday, urging the private sector to lose its fear of international trade.

Ryan Pinder, minister of financial services, said the Bahamas had to “jump in, not put a toe in the water” when it came to trading and expanding into overseas markets.

Noting that the Bahamas had traditionally adopted an “isolationist” approach, the Minister told a Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) luncheon that his ‘value-added’ trade strategy - combined with services exports - had the potential to “level our trade balance”.

That is presently several billion dollars in the red every year, at least on the current (merchandise) account, but Mr Pinder urged financial services and tourism practitioners to start exporting their human capital and expertise to other Caribbean industries.

Conversations with his counterparts in Haiti and the Dominican Republic indicated that both countries would welcome Bahamian expertise in those key industries, he added.

“We have to not be scared to access the international market, whether it be goods or services,” Mr Pinder said.

“We must be able to jump in, not put your toe in the water as the market is larger than 350,000 people. We have the tools and ability to cause our growth to take advantage of that marketplace.”

Noting that Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, lying just to the south, represented a collective market of 17-18 million people, Mr Pinder said Bahamian companies needed to do businesses there.

Emphasising the need to drive Bahamian economic growth through trade and exports, the Minister added: “Our GDP has been stagnant for 10 years, with no growth. Our population has grown, but the economy has not. That is a recipe for economic and social disaster.”

While the Government’s planned Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) Implementation Unit would look to address these issues, Mr Pinder said a ‘Rules or Origin’ consultant was set to arrive in the Bahamas in June.

“That is the mechanism to utilise the value-added trade strategy,” he added. The Government’s value-added strategy is predicated on increasing the value of a product brought into the Bahamas, then exporting it under then preferential terms of the EPA to Europe and the rest of the Caribbean. A similar strategy will likely follow when other trade agreements are in place.

The strategy also aims to leverage Freeport’s shipping and logistics infrastructure, plus its ‘free trade zone’s status, and Mr Pinder said: “It has the potential of levelling our trade balance by simultaneously increasing the export of goods, those we’ve added value to, and providing services.”