The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chief executive yesterday said it was working with the Government to generate an extra $500,000 to assist Hurricane Joaquin-ravaged businesses.

Speaking with Tribune Business at the BCCEC’s National Conclave of Chambers in the Bahamas, Edison Sumner said the Chamber had decided to focus on disaster preparedness and recovery this year in Joaquin’s aftermath.

He added that the Category Four storm had exposed weaknesses in disaster management, communication, business preparedness and continuity.

“We believed that it was important to look at these issues at the third annual conclave to ensure that we don’t face some of the similar challenges [in the future], and that is ensuring that businesses have a plan in place to be able to bounce back when they are hit with these kinds of disasters,” Mr Sumner said.

“Many of them had no plan; many of them were devastated by the storm. What we are hoping to achieve out of this conclave is to provide information to those Family Island chambers so they become the catalyst to disseminate the information back into their communities.”

Mr Sumner added: “We have a Family Island director who has gone out to all of the Family Islands after the hurricane. We have established the SME help desk which has been, since the hurricane, almost singularly focused on providing administrative support to these businesses.

“We have been supporting them financially through the Rebuild Bahamas initiative. We have been giving technical support and assisting with businesses whose Business Licenses had expired and should have been VAT registrants.”

Mr Sumner said many businesses impacted by Hurricane Joaquin are having significant challenges getting back in operation.

“We have seen that the majority of those businesses need some significant financial resources to get them back up and running,” he said.

“We are currently working on a proposal with the Government to assess another $500,000. That is going entirely towards the hurricane relief efforts and to assist more businesses to get back up and running.”

Mr Sumner added: “We were able to get the Government to consider not extending the exigency order necessarily, but allowing those who have already applied for some exemption or whose names are on the Chamber’s register or NEMA’s register, the exigency would extend to them until they would have brought in their supplies and there is no absolute deadline on that. We are glad that the Government made the decision to extend it that way.”

Mr Sumner said the majority of businesses impacted by Joaquin had no insurance. “The further south you go, the fewer people and businesses have insurance. There was also no plan in place and contingencies, no disaster recovery plan,” he said.

“There was no planning, and that is why so many business were caught with their pants down, so to speak. We are looking at how to protect the assets of businesses during a catastrophe, if we need to look at insurance and whether we need to have a discussion with the insurance industry on what they can do to lower the cost of insurance to those islands.”