The Tribune

The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce’s (BCCEC) chief executive is “tired” of receiving repeated negative economic reports on this nation, which needs to become “more agile” to reverse course.

Edison Sumner told Tribune Business the Bahamas had to “stop sitting”on policies and initiatives essential to its economic growth and development, and warned: “We can’t keep doing business the way we’ve always done.”

Disclosing that the Chamber was in talks with the Government over creating both an Innovation Council and Productivity Council, Mr Sumner said such bodies would enable the Bahamas to measure its own competitiveness rather than keep relying on international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

He also called for the Bahamas to focus on building entrepreneurs as opposed to simply job creation, arguing that this would help to “shore up” and diversify the economy while also retaining more wealth at home.

Speaking after the IMF released another grim economic outlook on the Bahamas late last week, Mr Sumner told Tribune Business that positive policy action was necessary to change the tone.

“The bottom line is: I’m really just tired of getting these reports period after period,” Mr Sumner told Tribune Business.

“There’s no shining light coming out of these reports, and we need to get positive news from the implementation of policies that make sense, grow the economy, create jobs and create opportunities for investors, local and foreign.”

The BCCEC chief executive said the Bahamas had a full quarter prior to the IMF’s 2016 Article IV visit, which is scheduled for March, to address some of the concerns raised in the Fund’s statement on its December 7-11 visit.

“Some are low hanging fruits that can be addressed quickly,” Mr Sumner said, “but we do not have the luxury of sitting on this kind of information, sitting on programmes for a long time.

“It’s having an adverse impact on us. We have to become more agile in responding to these situations, move on policies and programmes set for the country.

“It cannot be that we set up the regulations, put legislation in place, and one or two years later we’re grappling with the same issues and there’s no progress taking place.”

The IMF’s statement on its latest Bahamas visit implied that this nation was moving too slowly on addressing key structural weaknesses that are undermining this nation’s competitiveness.

The Fund said that addressing these was critical in the “low growth” environment the Bahamas is facing, and seemed to express unhappiness that the Government had yet to fully address the issues raised in its Article IV report earlier this year.

The Christie administration is continuing to move forward on issues such as energy sector reform and the National Development Plan, both of which were previously flagged by the IMF, but has done little on reforming loss-making public sector entities such as Bahamasair and the Water & Sewerage Corporation.

Focusing on other acknowledged weaknesses, Mr Sumner told Tribune Business: “There has to be serious concentration on skills development and productivity.

“We are in discussions now with the Government on development of an Innovation Council and Productivity Council.”

The Chamber chief said that while these were two separate bodies, it was possible that the private sector’s talks with the Christie administration might lead to them being “combined and consolidated”.

Yet he added: “This is how we get to properly measure productivity in the country without relying on S&P, Moody’s and the IMF. We will be able to measure productivity against other countries in the world.”

Mr Sumner said the Bahamas needed to identify what it was not doing correctly, and the areas that required fixing, emphasising that it could not be ‘business as usual’.

“What we’re doing is encouraging the Government and general public to, rather than simply looking for a job or replacement job, is to look at entrepreneurship and self-starter programmes,” he explained.

“Where there are people with good business plans and viable skills, use them to start new businesses rather than look at applying for a new job.

“Emphasis should be placed on the creation of entrepreneurship rather than job creation, and to diversify our economy by having entrepreneurs create businesses and employ people to work in them.”

Mr Sumner said the Chamber’s Small and Medium-Sized Business Help Desk was designed to support such an effort via a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) with the Government.

This initiative was also linked to the Trade Information Services Desk that is “on the horizon”, and intended to help Bahamian manufacturers and exporters find overseas markets for their products.

“We’re creating a vehicle for them to access data and information needed to export to other countries in the region and around the world,” Mr Sumner told Tribune Business.

“It should have significant benefits. These are the kinds of things we need to happen to shore up our economy, and find new ways to develop new industries. We cannot forever rely on the traditional industries of tourism and financial services.”