By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A liberalised Immigration policy would enable Freeport to recreate its “economic boom years” of the 1950s and 1960s, a leading QC yesterday again calling for the city’s expiring investment incentives to be extended to 2054.

Calling for the Government to remove a decades-long “stranglehold” over Freeport, Fred Smith QC urged that it allow the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) to become the long-promised “one-stop shop investment authority” for the city.

Describing Freeport as a true example of a public-private partnership (PPP), the Callenders & Co attorney and partner said the Government needed to “stop playing games” with Freeport’s business climate and investment incentives.

Mr Smith argued that the city needed to retain its existing real property and other tax breaks to differentiate Freeport from the Bahamas.

And, if the Government did extend the investment incentives due to expire in 2015, the well-known QC called on it to “hold the Port Authority’s toes to the fire” over its obligations to promote and develop Freeport.

Backing calls by Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) that “Freeport is ripe for the picking”, Mr Smith also supported the suggestion by its chairman, Robert Myers, that Immigration policy be loosened to allow foreign entrepreneurs to establish physical businesses in this nation.

“Freeport has always been tottering on the precipice of success, and the tipping point would be, as Mr Myers puts it, a liberalisation of Immigration policy,” Mr Smith told Tribune Business.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, when Freeport had a liberalised Immigration policy, Freeport boomed.”

He added: “It also boomed because the GBPA was allowed to be the one-stop shop investment authority. It is the only one-stop shop authority in the Bahamas.

“The Bahamas Investment Authority (BIA) does not legally exist. Half the problem that investors have in the rest of the Bahamas are the murky and grey areas that exist between the National Economic Council, the Investments Board, exchange control (the Central Bank), the Prime Minister’s Office and the BIA.”

The GBPA now normally defers to the central government in Nassau on all matters relating to investment approvals and Business Licences, negating that ‘one-stop shop’ ambition.

Yet Mr Smith said Prime Minister Christie should have used Freeport and the Hawksbill Creek Agreement, rather than the Resorts World Bimini project, to “epitomise what a successful PPP is” when addressing other Caribbean leaders earlier this month.

“As well as liberalising the Immigration policy, let the Port Authority do its job,” Mr Smith said. “I urge the Government to fill the sails of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement and let it fly across the waves of economic success to batter the shores of Freeport.

“Given that the Government has had a stranglehold on Freeport for decades, preventing a boom the city has always been poised for, it’s high time it stopped playing games and extended the rea property tax breaks and other incentives due to expire next year.

“I say that they should be extended to 2054 to ensure that investor confidence will be there for Freeport’s future.”

Mr Smith said he disagreed with fellow Freeport-based attorney, Terry Gape, who in a 2012 article in Tribune Business suggested that the Government not renew the real property tax incentive - or, at the very least, attach conditions to this.

Mr Gape, a Dupuch & Turnquest partner, suggested that the absence of any property tax-induced ‘carrying costs’ had encouraged real estate buyers - especially foreigners - to purchase and hold. This meant land was being ‘tied up’, not used for productive purposes, and Freeport’s real estate market was stagnating.

“Freeport needs exemptions from real property tax continue to set it apart from investing in the rest of the Bahamas,” Mr Smith argued.

“Instead of depriving our investment environment of that benefit, the Government should simply realign its thinking and focus on working with the Port Authority.

“If the Government does in fact hand the reins of promotion, Immigration, licensing and investment back to the Port Authority - where it should be under the Hawksbill Creek Agreement - then its focus should be on holding the Port Authority’s toes to the fire to make sure they promote the hell out of Freeport, so that once again it becomes the magic city.

“It will cost the Treasury nothing, and Freeport will continue to be the goose that lays the golden egg, with hundreds of millions of dollars to the Government annually.”

Mr Smith added that Freeport, with its planned lay-out and infrastructure, needed to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) just as much as Nassau if its economy was to grow and prosper.

“It is only when government, licensees and the Port Authority work together in the true spirit of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement that Freeport will attain its maximum potential and be the answer to so many of the economic woes of the Bahamas,” he told Tribune Business.

“If the Government would allow the Port Authority and licensees to bring back the boom times, it would be the perfect example of a PPP.”

Mr Smith expressed confidence that the Port Authority would “dazzle investors” if given the opportunity to become a ‘one-stop’ investment approval agency.