The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

DEMOCRATIC National Alliance finance spokesperson Youri Kemp has taken issue with the current trajectory of the country’s economy, expressing doubt that current political and public administrative structures would allow for the necessary fiscal changes to be crafted and employed.

In a recent interview with The Tribune, Mr Kemp, the party’s candidate for the Gardens Hills constituency in the upcoming general election, moved to identify and address the circumstances hindering the overall financial state of the country.

Addressing the perplexities of the country’s economy in the wake of the 2008 global recession, the former Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) consultant urged that the time is now to do away with “bad habits” and overt mismanagement of public funds.

According to Mr Kemp, the nature of doing business globally has mandated that the Bahamas start to utilise more transparent and progressive models to grow and advance the country’s economy.

Stressing that the economy is at a standstill, Mr Kemp said ancient, narrow-sighted practices has left the country in “a stagnant pool of waste, mismanagement, under performance and wasted opportunities.”

Pinpointing high energy costs, the difficulties and cost of doing business, bank rates, non-existing private sector lending, commercial bank regulations and tax rates as core reasons for limited growth and expansion of the last five decades, Mr Kemp called for a revitalised approach to the country’s financial services industry.

Moreover, he said successive governments have borrowed on the hopes that financial growth would eventually happen, however, that strategy has backfired – leaving the nation with an unrelenting legacy debt.

“That strategy had a major flaw and still has a major flaw today, the flaw being that if you were to borrow on the hope for a better tomorrow, it means you would have to move away from the bad habits that caused you to under perform,” Mr Kemp said.

He insisted that turning the proverbial blind eye to bad behaviour because of our close-knit society has only exacerbated the country’s problems.

Addressing the public sector, the largest employer in the country, Mr Kemp described it as a sum “of all our bad habits.”

He lamented that as a country, we have not committed to transparency in governance – particularly about how public finances are being administered.

“Transparency with regard to our economic statistics and (every) other vital and administrative statistics and measures, and more certainly with regard to our day-to-day and month-to-month financial reporting statistics – (is non-existent).”

He continued: “My thing is if you are not doing something wilfully malicious then you have nothing to worry about, and if you are not up to the task of the job in front of you, the public needs to know so we can put you somewhere where you can perform and put someone in your position where they can do a better job.”

“We have under performed due to our social habits and turning a blind eye is seen as justifiable and understandable as the only way to grow our economy and our people as a subsequence, then what we have done, and have been doing, is that we have merely reinforced those bad habits and have done so on borrowed money that has to be paid back with interest at a higher price down the line - in particular, borrowed money that our children and grandchildren need for their tomorrow, which we have clearly left underfunded.”

“What makes all of this worse is that the policy makers of today keep backing Bahamians into a corner where we are always in a state of desperation and operating from a point of reaction, and not working towards higher goals that builds upon sounder foundations that would be able to buffer us and absorb shocks more readily.”

Mr Kemp said the DNA has been clear on what needs to be done to spur investments, and intends to carry out several of these initiatives immediately, if the third party is elected to office.

Mr Kemp said: “We need to revolutionise the Bahamas Investment Authority where we see approvals automated, where investment advisors oversee this process for projects in their portfolio, in addition to allocating personnel and resources through the public sector chain where cross-ministry and cross-governmental department approvals are necessary.”

“(A DNA government) will increase the threshold for non-Cabinet related approvals for certain incentives in addition to the dollar value that ministries can approve themselves. This would open up the Cabinet to heavier workloads and more substantive projects and contracts,” he added.

“We will bring sweeping and radical energy reform to the Bahamas - from liberalising the oil import sector; opening the door to cleaner energy solutions; piloting clean energy projects within the Family Islands; and liberalising the Utilities Regularity and Competition Authority to be more lenient and open to clean energy projects and companies, in addition to giving the main electricity company a mandate to deliver on cleaner forms of energy and removing some of the dependency on fossil fuels.

“This is just a start with regard to energy.”

He also said that a lack of investments in every facet of Bahamian society – from education, security, housing, social security and even to the lack of domestic investment – is a result of corruption.

He said corruption has cost the country dearly, and needs to be cut “cold turkey.”

In late August, Moody’s announced that it had downgraded the Bahamas’ credit rating by one notch mainly because of the country’s “low medium-term growth” prospects and limited fiscal space compared to similar countries.

That came less than two months after the international credit rating agency said that it was placing the Bahamas “on review” for a potential downgrade, due to both its unexpected economic contraction and further deterioration in the government’s fiscal position.