PRIME Minister Philip ‘Brave’ Davis at a graduation ceremony at University of The Bahamas last night. Photo: Dante Carrer/Tribune Staff
By EARYEL BOWLEG and LYNAIRE MUNNINGS
Tribune Staff Reporters
THE business community hopes Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis will reduce taxes, simplify the tax code and improve the ease of doing business when he reveals the budget for the next fiscal year on Wednesday, according to the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) chairman Timothy Ingraham.
“It’s still difficult,” he told reporters yesterday, “to open bank accounts of your business in this country. It’s still difficult to get your business licence sorted out and in many instances, to get certificates of good standing.”
National Insurance Board contribution rates will increase on July 1. Otherwise, Economic Affairs Minister Michael Halkitis has said there will be no tax increases in the next budget cycle.
As usual, the government is tightlipped about what new measures or initiatives will accompany the next budget.
However, Office of the Prime Minister Director of Communications Latrae Rahming said yesterday that Mr Davis will address “historical challenges and legacy issues” that plague Bahamians.
Mr Davis will “foreshadow the announcements” concerning plans to reform Bahamas Power and Light, he said, adding: “He will set up the case as to why the government has to really comprehensively focus on SOEs and making sure they are much more than what they are, efficient and better managed.”
“You will also see a focus on the administration dealing with the central issue of health care and further investments in the critical areas of the administration. You will also see the prime minister speak to the gains his administration has been making, really clawing back a lot of the economic challenges The Bahamas was confronted with when he first came into office.”
Although the administration announced last year that there would be no tax increases, it introduced and raised numerous fees, angering interested groups in some cases. Mr Rahming could not say whether new or increased fees will be seen again this year.
Comments
Porcupine 5 months, 4 weeks ago
.The political class of The Bahamas is lost, incompetent, immoral and a total failure.
Sickened 5 months, 4 weeks ago
Brave's ain't checking for any of us except most of his cabinet. I heard he bought another safe. LOL!!!!
realfreethinker 5 months, 4 weeks ago
lololol
birdiestrachan 5 months, 4 weeks ago
The Bahamas and Bahamians have a lots of needs roads airports foodstamps for single mothers they say school breakfast where will the money come from
John 5 months, 4 weeks ago
Firstly, the BPL saga sucked all the hopes and aspirations of many businesses seeing a profit last year or even breaking even. Many retail businesses have not realized a profit since 2008 and seems every year there’s either increasing expenses or some competition in the market that erodes profit. Online shopping with it’s unfair advantages, for example has controlled the market for at least a decade. But guess what? Despite having advantages, consumers are realizing that online shopping is not cheap. And online companies, like Amazon are not only finding it difficult to continue services at a low cost, but competition from Chinese companies are eroding their market share and comp. Consumers are going back to brick and mortar stores. Hopefully there will be some more local shopping in The Bahamas. Government must do more to support local businesses and make them more competitive
ExposedU2C 5 months, 4 weeks ago
Rahming seems unaware that our "historical and legacy issues" are for the most part attributable to decades of incompetence, waste, fraud, and outright theft by corrupt and greedy politicians and their favoured friends that constitute the political ruling class at the highest levels of the PLP organisation.
The current most corrupt and grossly incompetent Davis led PLP government is a continuation of the PLPs failed progressive social and economic policies dating all the way back to SLOP that have brought the vast majority of the Bahamian people to their knees with little hope if any of a better tomorrow.
Porcupine 5 months, 4 weeks ago
Exactly, if sadly, right!
birdiestrachan 5 months, 4 weeks ago
The FNM government had twenty years to do everything The PLP under mr Pindling brought the Bahamas A mighty long way and no insults to him can change those facts a great man, golden tongue visionary ,he loved the Bahamas and its people he would never call us corrupt, no corruption in the Bahamas can compare with corruption in other countries, in the world ,none is without sin
ExposedU2C 5 months, 4 weeks ago
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........................
ExposedU2C 5 months, 4 weeks ago
Feast on this @birdiestrachan a/k/a the ChiCom controlled robot:
We need many more Bahamian engineers and much fewer Bahamian lawyers, especially the kind of lawyers who have little business sense and decide to become politicians make their nests. The elderly among us remember when BEC and BATELCO were efficiently run, profitable, and customer focused enterprises that were the envy of our region.. Back then these enterprises employed many well educated and trained Bahamians with pride in their work ethic and ability to serve the people.
Unfortunately all of that went out the door when SLOP and the PLP hierarchy decided dumbing down successive generations of Bahamians was their only way to preserve political power. Upon obtaining majority rule, SLOP and the PLP hierarchy wasted no time in starving our public education system of the funds and foreign teachers it needed to ensure new Bahamian engineers and other skilled Bahamian workers would eventually exist to replace those who retired.
Today we sorely lack well educated and trained Bahamians in many diverse technical fields because so few are willing to accept the type of government interference that goes on at SOEs by clueless lawyers who decided to become politicians to feather their own nests. The fraternity of corrupt politicians is also responsible for the harmful brain drain our country has been experiencing for decades.
Too many young Bahamians get an excellent education abroad in the STEM subjects and then decide to live abroad because they simply do not want their careers in their chosen fields interfered with or ended abruptly by corrupt politicians who are clueless about what's best for our nation and seem hell-bent in destroying it for their own personal gain and political survival at any cost.
Until we get the crooks out of politics, they and their cronies, both foreign and local, will feast on the PPP model of feeding our SOEs to the local and foreign business vultures who will pry every copper they can from the pockets of Bahamians. Affordable electricity, potable water, communication, etc. are vital to our people, our country's overall productivity, and our national security interests. These types of products and services should not be in the hands of profit hungry people in the private sector who will defeat whatever regulations are put in place to protect the Bahamian public.
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