The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

The Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) yesterday blasted the deputy prime minister for accusing it of “wishing the ill of a credit rating downgrade on The Bahamas”.

Senator Fred Mitchell, pictured, the Opposition party’s chairman, said in a statement it was “shocking” that K Peter Turnquest had the gall to accuse it and party leader, Philip “Brave” Davis, of making such suggestions.

Hitting back at an article in Tribune Business, Mr Mitchell said the $1.3bn in additional debt that is forecast to be incurred between now and the 2024-2025 fiscal year represents money that “generations to come will have to pay” back.

While the same could be said about the $2.4bn worth of debt racked up under the former Christie administration, Mr Mitchell accused the government of “running the economy into the ground” and using Hurricane Dorian as a “scapegoat” for its own mismanagement and poor governance.

Again, many observers could argue that similar charges can be made against the last PLP administration, but the party’s chairman said: “They [the government] cannot pay the VAT refunds. They owe almost every contractor in town. They refuse to pay civil servants. They have not made good on promised financial assistance to hurricane victims. There is no money on the ground. The evidence is that the hurricane relief effort is shambolic...

“The national debt will be $9bn in the coming months. The FNM will run a $700m deficit this fiscal year. Generations to come will have to pay this incurred debt. The PLP had nothing to do with that. Make no mistake, this financial crisis and mismanagement existed long before Dorian made landfall some 12 weeks ago.”

Mr Turnquest had accused Mr Davis of “working his hardest” to attract the credit rating agencies’ attention, as he asserted there was “no sign” of a Bahamas downgrade.

Rejecting Mr Davis’ fears that the country is “falling off a cliff” post-Hurricane Dorian and facing a “financial crisis”, he argued that this was the position when the Minnis administration took office in May 2017 but it had since “made significant progress” towards returning to fiscal health prior to the category five storm’s arrival.

Mr Davis on Sunday argued that “a downgrade is for certain”, alleging that the government had sought to “gloss over and paint a picture” more optimistic than the reality of a further $1.3bn surge in the national debt to an all-time high of $9.5bn come the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

“He is certainly working his hardest to cause a secondary review,” Mr Turnquest responded, “but we have no indication of that [a further credit rating downgrade] at the moment and believe then fundamentals of the economy remain strong. We are working hard to bring these projects in the pipeline online, which will help us to offset the loss of Abaco and Grand Bahama.