The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Chamber’s chairman said yesterday that improving the Bahamas’ corporate governance culture, a key pillar of the National Development Plan, is “critical” to preventing further declines in this nation’s ‘ease of doing business’ rankings.

“In order to move the pendulum, the National Development Plan is going to be critical,” said Gowon Bowe. “One of the pillars of the plan is corporate governance, and in order to affect change we need a performance-driven civil service.

“Ministers and Parliamentarians will be responsible for bringing forward legislation, but they will not be the ones drafting and executing it all. When we look at the Governance initiatives in the plan to modernise the civil service, enhance their customer service mantras and ensure that they are being held accountable, that is going to help when it comes to saying these are the things we need to effect and ensure that they are prepared to move very quickly.”

Mr Bowe added that the social and economic elements of the Plab also come into play. “We have to determine what we want to be known for, and that is going to be one of those situations where it is going to be tremendously important to ensure that there is a structure and mechanism to have that feedback,” he said.

“When we look at the social pillar, education is going to be critical in terms of how well things are done in the civil service and private sector.”    

The Bahamas is now perilously close to dropping into the bottom third of the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ rankings’, after the country was ranked 121st out of 190 nations when it comes to facilitating private sector activity.

Most notably, this nation had dropped 73 places in the global rankings when it came to the ease of ‘paying taxes’. The drop  in the Bahamas’ ‘paying taxes ease’ ranking, from 22nd in the world to 95th, was the main reason why this nation failed to improve its overall position in the World Bank rankings, falling one spot from 120th to 121st year-over-year.