The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister yesterday asserted that the Christie administration has created 20,000 jobs since May 2012.

While making his contribution to the 2015-2016 mid-year Budget debate, Shane Gibson, minister of labour and national insurance, said the Christie administration  had created 20,120 jobs since coming to power.

Mr Gibson said that while the Opposition has continually taken the Christie administration to task over its 10,000 jobs within the first year pledge, he claimed that it had doubled that target to-date.

“They keep asking: Where are the 10,000? To date we have gotten over 20,000,” Mr Gibson told Parliament. “There are a number of big projects in the pipeline. Projects where literally thousands of more jobs will be created between now and the next couple of months.”

Opposition Finance spokesman, K. P Turnquest, argued that there were many Bahamians who remain unemployed or underemployed.

“The reality is in 2012, when the Free National Movement left office, the unemployment rate was 14.7 per cent. It is now 14.8 per cent and growing. The fact of the matter is there are many Bahamians today who are unemployed, underemployed and begging for a change,” said Mr Turnquest.

Mr Gibson retorted that when the first Christie administration left office in 2007, the unemployment rate was 7.9 per cent, asserting that the current government was trying to improve the figures from where the Ingraham administration had left it.

“Despite the 4,000 coming out of school every year we were able to hold the unemployment rate,” said Mr Gibson.

    Mr Turnquest pointed out that a year after the Ingraham administration took office in 2007, the global recession occurred.

“That had a direct effect on the economy of thee Bahamas. The reality is that other countries in this region are showing growth more significant than the Bahamas is doing,” the east Grand Bahama MP said.

“The economy of the United States is showing growth; even Jamaica is showing growth. In order for the Bahamian people to put this in context, he must also include the fact that there was a great recession during that period, and the Bahamas was starting to come out of it toward the end of 2012. There has been a little bit of recovery, but no where near what they are making it out to be.”