The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Politicians were yesterday urged to “stop the blame game” over the recent unemployment rate increase, as the Prime Minister described the matter as “a storm in a tea cup”.

Unveiling the mid-year Budget in the House of Assembly, Perry Christie said the 1.4 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate for the six months to end-November 2014 - from 14.3 per cent to 15.7 per cent - was caused by the labour force growing faster than new jobs created.

Pointing out that total employment in the Bahamas “increased modestly” over that six month period, Mr Christie said the increased unemployment rate also resulted from the annual several thousand high school leavers entering the workforce.

And he suggested that labour force growth was further “buoyed” by a 6.6 per cent decline in the number of ‘discouraged workers’ - those Bahamians who had given up looking for work.

This, the Prime Minister said, showed that several hundred previously discouraged workers had re-entered the labour force to search for work because they believed their prospects of finding a job had improved.

Emphasising that it was incorrect to suggest net jobs had been lost, Mr Christie said: “The reality is that the rise in the unemployment rate resulted from an expansion of the labour force that simply outstripped the growth in jobs.

“As I stated earlier, achieving much stronger jobs growth is one of my Government’s key policy priorities.”

Then, touting the several thousand direct and indirect jobs set to be created with Baha Mar’s Spring 2015 opening, the Prime Minister added: “I’m convinced we won’t have to wait long for improvement because thousands of new jobs, as I said, are going to be created this year alone.”

And, turning back to the debate over the November unemployment figures, he added: “That is why, Mr Speaker, we must be careful about storms in a tea cup.

“My government is resolute and uncompromising in its determination to sharply reduce the vexing problem of high youth unemployment, in particular.”

With the College of the Bahamas (COB), the Bahamas Technical and Vocational Institute (BTVI) and National Training Agency all key to achieving that objective, Mr Christie said: “I am confident that, through our determined growth strategy, and with the education and preparation of our youth at its core, we will achieve the higher, more inclusive growth rates that reduce unemployment to significantly lower levels.”

Gowon Bowe, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chairman, yesterday urged all sides to “abandon partisan politics” and focus on “the mammoth task” of getting the Bahamian economy to where it needs to be.

“We need to move away from the blame game,” Mr Bowe told Tribune Business, pointing to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections that the Bahamas needed to achieve a 5.5 per cent average annual GDP growth rate in the five years to 2018 if it was to both slash its existing 15.7 per cent unemployment rate by 50 per cent, plus absorb all new workforce entrants.

“We know we have a mammoth task ahead of us, and there is a lot of work to be done,” Mr Bowe added. “There is no need for a back and forth between the political parties.

“Things are moving positively, and we have to move away from partisan politics and talk about our economy.

“In reality, since Independence, neither party can take credit for all successes, and neither one can run away from having created some of the challenges we now face,” he told Tribune Business.

“When we look at our competitors, regardless of who’s in office, they have a consistent identity because they have a National Development Plan and follow through with it.”

Mr Bowe said that, in the Bahamas, successive governments of both colours wanted “all the credit heaped on them when things are so good”, but none of the blame when matters were bad.

“We have to get past that,” he added.

The BCCEC chairman agreed with the Prime Minister that the November unemployment figures had probably “been blown out of proportion”, and the key challenge was generating enough economic growth and new jobs to absorb a rapidly-growing labour force.