The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Democratic National Alliance’s (DNA) leader yesterday revealed that his family’s aviation investment had been grounded by the year-long failure to obtain the necessary permits.

Branville McCartney told Tribune Business that the charter air service, proposed by himself and his brother, had failed to take-off because of their inability to obtain Civil Aviation Authority approvals.

Disclosing that they had been unable to obtain answers to their languishing application, Mr McCartney said it highlighted the frustration most Bahamian businesses and entrepreneurs experienced in dealing with government bureaucracy and ‘red tape’.

“My brother and I have a plane, and it’s been one year that we’ve been trying to get the necessary license for chartering; the charter license,” the DNA leader told this newspaper. “We had some contracts set up to do some flights, and we’ve lost it.

“Every time you go to Civil Aviation to do certain things, they have new inspectors coming in and put your application to one side. The application has been in, put aside and they said they’d get to it.”

Mr McCartney said he and his brother had been unable to discover their application’s fate, or get any answers from Civil Aviation.

Pointing out that the Bahamian aviation industry had numerous rogue operators, both local and foreign, who acted as ‘hackers’ in providing unlicensed charter services, the DNA leader said his plight epitomised the frustrations of fellow businessmen seeking to operate “by the book”.

“You have to make sure your plane is in order; that you have the necessary manual and equipment in place,” Mr McCartney added. “We’ve spent money in that regard, and cannot benefit from it. It has been one year.”

He and his brother had planned to offer charter services “throughout the islands”, and had “set up” flights to go to Exuma, Eleuthera and the Berry Islands.

“It would have been Bahamians and tourists,” Mr McCartney said of the target passenger market. “We had a pending agreement to do a contract with two flights, six days a week, to one of those islands, but we couldn’t close on the contract simply because we did not have the necessary approvals.

“I’m not going to fly a plane, or have my plane flown, if we don’t have the necessary approvals. We try to do things by the book, and make sure all the safety precautions are in there. In that industry there are people who would fly you and have no safety regulations.”

Mr McCartney said he and his brother planned to start their proposed charter business with their five-seater Aztec plane, but had hopes of quick expansion - had the necessary approvals come through.

“The idea was that we were also going to get nine-seater, which perhaps we would wet lease for a period of time,” he told Tribune Business. “We can’t get off the ground. We’re not going to invest in equipment if we can’t fly, and get people to charter it.

“There’s a certain requirement you need to meet, and we can’t seem to get the necessary approvals from Civil Aviation. We had four pilots on the schedule. We had other things set up, but we needed the foundation first, and then could move forward with regard to the other planes. It just shows the stress, the frustration of doing business in this country. That’s an example.”

The Minnis administration has established a private-public sector committee to address the Bahamas’ ‘ease of doing business’ deficiencies, and develop recommendations for how flaws can be improved.

The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) has also established its own committee to tackle the issue, which has seen this nation slide progressively in the World Bank’s annual ‘ease of doing business’ rankings to its current 121st spot.

These efforts, though, have seemingly yet to take effect. A despondent Mr McCartney told Tribune Business: “Things are not moving. The economy is dead, dead, dead. Something has to be done.

“I’m looking for this government to start doing things which they spoke about when in Opposition. Dionisio D’Aguilar [minister of tourism] and I talked about a number of things, including the ‘ease of doing business’.

“We need that in governance. Doing business is still difficult; it has not changed. There’s a lot of ‘red tape’, and it’s a turn-off for local business persons to get into anything new.”

The DNA chief also echoed calls for Business License fee reforms, describing it as a regressive tax that - through its imposition on gross turnover - effectively taxed many Bahamian businesses into losses.

“March is right around the corner, and many people have not recovered from paying their Business License earlier this year,” Mr McCartney said. “In addition to that, electricity bills have doubled, so keeping your doors open is a challenge.

“I just hope and pray this government starts making doing business in this country easier.”