The Tribune

IF there is one phrase that The Bahamas continues to fail to live up to, it is “ease of doing business”.

St Anne’s MP Adrian White spoke up at the start of this month to say that we continue to “fumble the ball” after he spent a day wrestling with the Inland Revenue’s portal, which was down on its first full business day, leaving business owners trying their best to find a way to file their returns and make applications.

Last week, realtors protested that “there’s no such thing as ease of doing business in The Bahamas” with the time to do property deals having increased four to six-fold.

Long-time leader in the field Mike Lightbourn talked of a real estate transaction that was two years in the making that was still needing to be closed but slowed down by issues with Inland Revenue. He pointed to another transaction where a house was listed for sale at $2m but the property tax for it was valued at $3.1m. Needless to say, buyers do not want to be paying property tax at a rating a million above the price tag.

Then again last week, businesses struggled to meet Monday’s VAT payment deadline due to what was described as “growing pains” with the Inland Revenue tax portal.

Let us be clear – there should not be growing pains with such a crucial portal. It should work. If there are growing pains, it probably means that it was not adequately tested before it went live.

As it was, it was not accepting electronic payments by credit and debit cards. One would think that would be an essential of a portal that is trying to receive, well, revenue. The clue is in the name of the department.

The developer is apparently being asked for “more bandwidth”. How much stress testing was done for the number of visitors the site could handle at any one time, we wonder.

The operations manager of the department said complaints that companies could not pay online were “not a good excuse” because they could instead do a wire transfer or go to an RBC branch instead. Nonsense. If a business allocates the time to complete the task based on the premise that your portal works, it then has to scramble to carry out an alternative. And some businesses may not have a convenient RBC branch – especially those on Family Islands.

The only way to budget the time accordingly is to presume that the government will fail on its end of the bargain.

Business licence filings are around the corner on January 31. Will we see a quiet week with smooth running for businesses? What’s your prediction?

And in today’s Tribune, we read of the woes at Road Traffic.

Long lines, a machine to print licences that often doesn’t, and apparently printing now taking place on Family Islands instead because we do not appear to be up to the task in New Providence.

According to FNM leader Michael Pintard, there is also apparently a financial dispute – with corrected licences not being printed until the government pays a New Zealand firm for funds it is owed.

If that is true, is the government running short of funds? Clarity on that situation ought to be forthcoming – and quickly.

Meanwhile, the Road Traffic facilities at the Sports Centre are, according to Mr Pintard, “falling apart and overrun by rodents, driving the staff out and cramming them into the West Bay Street and Carmichael Road substations”.

That brings all the customers needing to carry out licence renewals or registrations and so on to each of those smaller stations, which are not built for such a volume of people.

Try telling those the phrase “ease of doing business” to those left to wait for hours in the sun at one of the Road Traffic substations.

Put it all together. Website portals that do not work. Disputes that slow down property deals – and other business deals. VAT struggles. Hours in queues to carry out simple procedures. Machinery that doesn’t work. Locations that are inadequately maintained.

Is this really the best we can do?