The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas has been losing ground in the financial services sector for more than two decades and that decline continues to get worse, according to Democratic National Alliance (DNA) leader Branville McCartney.

Yesterday, Mr McCartney claimed that the outsourcing in the commercial banking sector was mainly as a result of the high cost of doing business in the country.

According to a recent Labour Force and Household Income Survey compiled by the Department of Statistics, workers employed in the “finance, insurance, real estate and other business service sectors experienced the greatest job loss, with 36 per cent - 4,447 jobs.

“We have been losing our financial services industry since 2000 when we signed away our industry and it continues to get worse,” said Mr McCartney. “We seem to bend and don’t know our wealth in terms of our location and in terms of what have to offer as a country. Consequently, we capitulate when it comes down to a number of international agreements and people as a result, in the financial industry they run elsewhere.”

Mr McCartney added: “Another problem that we have is the cost of doing business in this country. Many of the commercial banks are laying persons off and they are taking their operations to other places, such Barbados and Trinidad, where the cost for them is less than what it is in the Bahamas. The banking industry is a business as well. They are looking at ways in which they can get more bang for their buck so to speak and make more of a profit.”

Mr McCartney described the overall cost of doing business for Bahamians as “astronomical”. “The government really needs to look at that and one way of doing that is lowering electricity bills. The cost of oil around the world is the lowest it’s been in years, yet our electricity bills are still high because we have certain persons in this country who stand to benefit and as a result nothing is being done,” he said.