By YOURI KEMP
Tribune Business Reporter
ykemp@tribunemedia.net
The Deputy Prime Minister yesterday said a “roll-out plan” for reform of the Government’s main investment agency will be unveiled in upcoming weeks amid a drive to “make doing business easier”.
Chester Cooper, also minister of tourism, investments and aviation, told a media briefing ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting that “significant announcements” will be made shortly on the Government’s plans to transform the Bahamas Investment Authority (BIA) into a more proactive investment promotion agency known as Bahamas Invest.
He added that the Government is “actively engaged with consultants to advance the development of Bahamas Invest”, and said: “This is going to be an opportunity to make it easier to do business and also to look at a domestic investment unit. We anticipate over the course of the next several weeks there will be some announcements with a specific roll-out plan. There is a committee at the moment. We are actively engaged to really work out the kinks.”
The consultant he referred to is thought to be McKinsey & Co. The Government is eager to revamp the BIA along the lines of its Jamaican counterpart, JAMPRO, converting it into a proactive agency that goes out and targets the investors and industries desired by The Bahamas for economic growth and job creation as opposed to simply letting all manner of projects come to.
Mr Cooper, pledging to eliminate red tape and bureaucracy with the investor application and approvals procedure, added: “This will be a significantly streamlined process and, at the moment, we have already started some digitisation. There’s going to be even more.
“The process is going to allow investors and applicants to track the status of the application directly online. So what we hope to be able to happen, once we launch, is for no matter where the investor is, no matter which agency the application is at during any given point in time, they will be able to see real time what’s happening. That will cause there to be more transparency, and also speed up the process. Digitisation is going to be the key.”
The investment regime restructuring will also involve creation of a compliance unit “to ensure that current foreign direct investors are in compliance with the terms of their Heads of Agreement” and all obligations they have signed up to. There will also be a “facilitations unit” that will allow for inter-agency coordination over the vetting of investment applications.
Finally, there will be an “operations processing unit” that will receive applications and advance them through to the National Economic Council (NEC), which is really the Cabinet. Mr Cooper said: “Then there’s going to be a unit that deals with marketing and promotions.
“So at the moment, all of this is handled mainly by a small group, led by the director of investments. What we want to be able to do is to really fully resource Bahamas Invest so that it becomes a very nimble and progressive unit. I’m very excited about what’s going to happen with this unit. Over the course of the next few weeks and months, you’ll see it all roll out and I believe the Bahamian people will be very proud of.”
The deputy prime minister had previously said the reformed Bahamas Invest would be unveiled in September/October 2022. Meanwhile, he added that the dispute with major US airlines over The Bahamas air navigation fees and air space sovereignty is the subject of negotiations. “The airlines made a complaint with the Department of Transportation and we provided a legal response to that complaint,” Mr Cooper said.
“The Department of Transportation came back. They had some additional questions and we’ve responded to those questions yesterday, so we continue to engage. I reiterate that the airlines are our partners. We have seen significant airlift, we’ve seen a significant increase in tourist arrivals and, as a result of the partnerships that we have with the airlines, we continue to have a very robust tourism industry.
“We are committed to amicable resolution, but we maintain our sovereign right to charge for our air space. This dialogue is continuing, and we expect to engage diplomatically on it as well.”
Speaking ahead of this week’s CARICOM leaders meeting, Mr Cooper said there will be discussions about the possibility of increasing airlift and connectivity around the region. “Many of our Caribbean counterparts have asked for Bahamasair to provide service to their countries. We are assessing the feasibility of these requests,” he added.
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