The Tribune

BY FAY SIMMONS

TRIBUNE Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

THE CENTRAL Bank’s governor yesterday said it would be premature to conclude that this summer's Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) outages have materially affected the wider economy’s growth and output.

"I would not want to draw too many new conclusions from that," John Rolle said at the regulator’s half-year economic briefing. "We have not done any quantitative work, but you want to be very careful in trying to connect the dots from a few power supply disruptions and economic performance."

Instead, Mr Rolle said the more important issue is reducing The Bahamas' long-standing energy costs, which continue to influence investment decisions and economic competitiveness.

"I think it's better to say that if you look at the overall cost structure in The Bahamas, the cost of energy is a factor in those tie-break decisions that are being made around investments, and that is not a 2026 issue,” he added. “That is an historical issue, which the investments in the sector will potentially address by reducing some of the baseline costs for electricity generation."

Mr Rolle added that ongoing investments in the energy sector could provide broader economic benefits by lowering electricity costs over the long-term and supporting stronger growth.

"What's also positive is that a lot of the investments that have been formulated over the last year-plus are making use of liquidity in the domestic financial sector," said Mr Rolle. "That's a very good thing, and there's a lot more capacity for private sector mobilisation of liquidity through these types of interventions."

The Governor said he was not aware of any significant disruption to the banking system following Thursday morning’s island-wide power outage.  Asked whether the outage had affected banks after reports that several automated teller machines (ATMs) were unavailable, Mr Rolle said financial institutions generally have contingency measures in place to maintain operations.

"I'm not aware, but again, I'm not going to draw any conclusion from a single event," he said. "Financial institutions typically have very good business continuity plans with reserve power supplies, so you would need to be very careful in taking note of where those ATM machines are located and what direct, continuous control banks have over them."

Mr Rolle noted that many ATMs operate outside bank branches, meaning their availability can depend on factors beyond a bank's direct control. "A lot of the ATMs on this island - in fact, the majority of them- are probably located outside of banking premises, so you want to bear that in mind," he said.