The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government will “never make right what they did wrong” with the New Providence Road Improvement Project, a leading businessman said yesterday, urging the private sector to accept the compensation offered and “put this chapter behind us”.

While acknowledging that the total $15 million package being proposed by the Christie administration was “not sufficient” to compensate business owners for all the losses they had suffered, Dionisio D’Aguilar said companies had to be “realistic” in what they could expect - especially given the Government’s fiscal constraints.

The Superwash president, who saw five laundromat locations impacted by the protracted roads project, said Coconut Grove Business League (CGBL) spokesman Ethric Bowe and other members could not expect the Government to go into every business, on every road, and try to figure out how much each enterprise had lost.

Disclosing to Tribune Business that it would cost his business $250,000 to ‘tie in’ the access to his businesses with the newly-raised roads, Mr D’Aguilar urged the private sector to “settle this quickly and move on”.

The Government is offering, just as Tribune Business predicted, a mixture of tax/fee breaks and incentives as compensation to companies impacted by the New Providence Road Improvement Project.

Many in the CGBL believe the offer, said to be capped at $15 million, is nowhere near sufficient to compensate its more than 50 members for losses - previously estimated at $30-$40 million - said to have been caused by the roads project.

That figure excludes all the businesses on Prince Charles Drive and other road corridors who were also hit, but Mr D’Aguilar said he “can’t be selfish” and focus on obtaining full compensation.

Arguing that business owners could not view their predicament in isolation from the Government’s - and country’s - fiscal predicament, the former Chamber of Commerce president said: “On the one hand, it’s clearly not sufficient to compensate people for all the damages they went through, but at least it appears as if they’re [the Government] looking at doing something.

“I don’t think the previous government would have done something. But we must take all this promised expenditure in light of the fact the Government is clearly financially strapped.

“The Government has spent an absolute fortune on infrastructure, almost to the point where it has put the financial security of the country in jeopardy by doing all this.”

As a result, Mr D’Aguilar said that while his “personal, selfish” response to the Government’s $15 million package was “this is not enough”, he had to take into consideration what was in the Bahamas’ wider national interests.

“The Government will never make right what they did wrong,” Mr D’Aguilar told Tribune Business, suggesting that businesses would never recover the full cost of the roadworks.

“What was so frustrating was they never took into consideration the effect it would have on businesses when they closed those roads,” he added.

“The end product is we have much-improved infrastructure, but it has been a huge cost, and any additional expenditure will only add to that.

“It’s been vastly mismanaged, one could say, but does paying these people seriously impact the national considerations of the country?

“I can’t be selfish. It hurt me, but didn’t kill me. It killed some people, and hopefully the benefits given out will help those people and businesses will be resurrected.

“It isn’t to give me back sales that have been already lost; it’s to give businesses severely impacted air to breathe. Everybody has to temper their claims based on the economic reality.”

And Mr D’Aguilar continued: “Everyone has to be realistic. The Ingraham administration probably spent 10 years of budget in two years, and we can’t sustain this level of expenditure.

“OK, it happened, but the Government doesn’t have the money to sustain the rate of expenditure. Unless we taxes or do something to improve the revenue intake, I don’t know where we’re getting this $15 million from.

“I’d settle with the Government, take it and run as fast as I can, and just move on from this chapter. Hopefully, the next time they’ll do major infrastructural works they will allocate resources to minimise the impact on business.”

Agreeing that it was impossible for the Government to compensate impacted companies in cash, Mr D’Aguilar agreed that the Government’s offer was “reasonable and realistic”.

He added that he was “shocked” by the Government’s position, as he had not been expecting them to do anything when it came to compensating the private sector.

“I think it’s important for the business community to settle this quickly and move on. If it drags on for years and years, it will delay the resurrection and businesses resurrecting themselves over Christmas,” the Superwash chief told Tribune Business.

“Ethric and others want the Government to go into every road, figure out how much was lost and hire a forensic accountant. The Government does not have the resources to do that, the technical capacity to do that, and many small businesses probably do not have the accounting records to review.

“My response to the Government is: ‘Thanks very much, take advantage of it if they offer it to me, move on and put this chapter behind me’.”

He added that it would be impossible for the Government to compensate companies such as Robin Hood and others that had already gone out of business.

Mr D’Aguilar said it would cost him $250,000 “to make adjustments to my properties so that customers can easily get in and out of my businesses”.

He added that the project had arbitrarily taken 3,000 square feet of his Blue Hills and Carmichael Road laundromat for the new roads, and changed its configuration, requiring it to be “completely redone”.

And Superwash was also required to raise the level of its properties to match the new roads, in a bid to avoid flooding.

Rupert Roberts, SuperValue’s president and owner, indicated to Tribune Business that negotiations between the CGBL and the Government were likely to continue.

He added that the supermarket chain’s main issues were the Blue Hill Road reversal, and the 18-month closures of East Street/Robinson Road and Prince Charles Drive.

Mr Roberts said that when SuperValue’s roadworks-related losses were assessed several years ago it was “big money”, and now it would be “big, big money”.

The Government is offering several forms of compensation, such as business licence and real property tax breaks; six-month Customs duty exemptions; a 10 per cent discount on BEC bills for 18 months; and $10,000 ‘soft’ loans at concessionary rates from the Bahamas Development Bank (BDB).