The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas is preparing to abandon its “by the seat of our pants” approach to national development, a Cabinet Minister yesterday disclosing that the first ‘State of the Nation’ report is likely to be released in January 2016.

Khaalis Rolle, minister of state for investments, told Tribune Business that the Government was seeking technical support from the Organisation for American States (OAS) to help ‘bridge the gap’ between now and when the Bahamas’ National Development Plan (NDP) is implemented.

Speaking from Guatemala, where he was attending the Americas Competitiveness Forum, Mr Rolle reiterated his belief that the Bahamas is not slipping in the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ rankings due to its own performance, but because other countries are reforming and improving while this nation is ‘standing still’.

“I can tell you that the countries that are doing well, and improving in the rankings, they’re doing it because they have a well-structured work plan and competitiveness units that are designed to make things better,” Mr Rolle told Tribune Business.

“It’s not that we’re getting significantly worse. They’re getting better because they have a work plan, and most of them have a National Development Plan.

“Colombia, during their presentation, said the fundamental issue for them was not having a National Development Plan. As soon as they headed in that direction, the entire paradigm changed.”

The Bahamas last month slipped out of the world’s top 100 nations in the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ rankings, falling another nine spots to 106th position, a decline that the private sector branded “untenable”.

Both business executives and Cabinet ministers subsequently agreed that the Bahamas needs to reverse this declining trend and the negative perception this creates among Bahamian and foreign investors.

The so-called National Development Plan, which is being developed by the Government in partnership with the private sector and College of the Bahamas (COB), is seen by some as a key element in reviving the economy and regaining this nation’s momentum.

The Plan is intended to guide this nation’s economic and social growth strategies, providing a foundation and model that will help achieve selected development targets, and eschewing the ‘ad hoc’ approach the Bahamas has traditionally relied upon.

“There are a lot of moving parts and different initiatives that feed into this plan,” Mr Rolle said, with the ‘State of the Nation’ report the first concrete outcome.

That report is designed to show how the Bahamas is performing today, benchmarked against other jurisdictions, plus provide an analysis of how the country got here. The ‘State of the Nation’ report will thus provide the platform against which all progress under the National Development Plan will be measured.

“We’ve completed the ‘State of the Nation’ report,” Mr Rolle told Tribune Business. “We’re double checking and triple checking, and some of the information has changed since we started the process.

“We’ve done a lot of consultation. We met with the Black Village Community Association last week. We’re going Over-the-Hill, into people’s homes and churches, and talking to anyone who wants to talk.”

Asked when the ‘State of the Nation’ report would be released publicly to the Bahamian people, Mr Rolle replied: “We’re looking at January.

“It’s largely completed. It’s now determining the best venue and time to release it. Countries normally take five years to do these things.”

Acknowledging that the Bahamas had not developed according to a formal, well laid-out plan, Mr Rolle conceded: “We’ve just done it by the seat of our pants for a long time.

“The world was a lot different then and it worked. The world has changed, and now we have to change with the world.”

Mr Rolle said he was meeting with technical advisers at the OAS, which organises the Americas Competitiveness, to seek their guidance and assistance in ‘filling the gap’ until the National Development Plan was completed.

“This will help to drive us,” he added. “What it will help us do is provide a lot more focus on the sustainable development goals.

“Essentially, a National Development Plan has to dovetail in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

Mr Rolle attended the Americas Competitiveness Forum accompanied by Edison Sumner, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chief executive, in a bid to ensure the private sector was heavily involved in the NDP effort.

“I don’t do anything without the private sector. For anything to work, they have to be involved,” he added.