The Tribune

LOCAL and foreign investors are probably having more board room sessions about whether this is the right time to invest in this country. So far, the Christie government has done nothing to assure the private sector that they know the direction in which their government’s sails are set. More borrowing seems to be their main agenda.

Our young and untried Minister of State for Finance is confident that his government can lower the Bahamas’ debt to 50 per cent of GDP by 2016/2017.

So far, however, his government has given the public no reason to believe in any confidence that he as State Minister might have or any promises his government might make.

In one year whatever promises the Christie government has tried to keep have backfired — and the backfire has cost the Public Treasury a handsome sum. Also in the short space of a year they have borrowed more than $1 billion. This country is now so deep in debt that no one should be surprised if the grim reaper in the form of Moody’s and/or Standard and Poor — the Wall Street rating agencies — come knocking at our door with the news that this country – already recognised as having “the largest relative increase in government debt levels” in the Caribbean — has indeed been eliminated from the arena of high finance.

Although the Ingraham government was criticised for its hefty borrowing to repair this country’s infrastructure in an effort to maintain jobs and prepare the country for the day when the economy would start to improve, at least Bahamians can see where their money was spent. Not so with the Christie administration.

Today Bahamians see nothing. They only hear of more borrowing. So far there has only been a wastage of money on a confused referendum, a questionable National Insurance report, and haphazard spending on Urban Renewal.

As the year closed in December, Moody’s said that the Christie administration had “yet to credibly commit to a fiscal consolidation plan.”

Moody’s selected Bahamas Electricity Corporation for special mention. It noted the multi-million dollar “implicit subsidy” provided annually to BEC, which was exempt from paying duties on its fuel imports.

However, in his budget Mr Christie announced that BEC will once more become exempt from fuel tax imports as a means of providing relief to consumers on electricity costs. These costs are projected to decline by 6.6 per cent as a result, said the prime minister. However, BEC as well as other government corporations, will soon have to pay a business licence tax like the rest of us.

Today BEC is a tiger that chairman Leslie Miller has by the tail. Mr Miller’s actions in his attempt to bring BEC in line with recognised business practices is long overdue. Union members have taken advantage of their fellow Bahamians for far too long. We commend Mr Miller for having the guts to take them on.

After the disorganised spending of $15 million on Urban Renewal 2.0 last year we are surprised that in this year’s budget the government had the brass to ask for another $10 million. Little wonder FNM Deputy Leader Loretta Butler-Turner in the House of Assembly last week referred to it as another Christie administration “slush fund.”

“I do not believe, that to this date, we have gotten an accurate account on the previous millions of dollars that was used for Urban Renewal,” said Mrs Butler-Turner. “Whether it was for the clearance of land or for the repairs of various homes, I think that this is certainly a fund that there has been no accountability.

“As far as we have seen it seems to be the largest amounts of money that is earmarked for any one project. So in that regard I am extremely concerned with the money the government is using,” she told the House.

In a speech in Freeport in July last year, Mr Christie assured the public that for Urban Renewal to be effective it had to be “above politics.” The reason it has attracted so much suspicion and criticism is that it has never been above politics.

It was claimed that not only was the programme not organised, but that people were being put in positions for which they were not qualified. All decisions, it was claimed, even by some close to the programme, were political. The main complaint was that the benefits of the programme — especially of the clearing of large tracts of land — went only to PLP supporters, who set their own price on each job. No one checked whether their charges were fair, nor even whether the job was done. No wonder a member of one of the programme’s advisory Boards demanded to know where thousands of dollars in donations had gone.

Despite the fact that there are still many questions to be answered on the spending of the first $15 million, another $10 million of the people’s money has been allocated in the Budget for a second go round.

And now we turn to a “clerical error” that government, despite promising to correct it, seems once again to have “overlooked” it. Soon, if Bahamians allow them to overlook it long enough, what was once fiction will soon slip into fact.

According to the report on today’s front page it would seem that a $6,000 “clerical error” — meant to be a salary increase for junior ministers — has yet to be corrected. It was claimed that no increase was ever intended. But the error has not been corrected. Does this mean that in fact these juniors have, through an uncorrected “clerical error,” received a salary increase?

With this country being brought to its knees in debt instead of raising the salaries of state ministers, government should be seriously considering how many of them they can now get off the payroll. What, for example, are they doing to justify their keep?

For example, when the prime minister has to step in to do the job that a state minister should be capable of doing in the absence of his Minister, it is time to seriously consider whether the services of that junior minister are needed.

In a declining economy a government should be doing all in its power to start cutting back on its own expenses at the same time doing everything in its power to increase incentives to encourage the private sector to fill the gap of job creation.

But daily confidence in this government is ebbing and business owners are wondering what their next move should be.