The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

The Bahamas is in an unprecedentedly precarious fiscal situation. This has not been caused by COVID-19, but by decades of reckless borrowing and waste, bending over backwards to please the changing fancies of our OECD masters to the near destruction of the financial services industry and a failure to plan for sustainable growth in a diversified economy. The current pandemic has only exposed the many failures of past governance.

None of this has been made any better by the unreasoned dictates of the incompetent authoritarian who seems drunk with power, but bereft of common sense. He continues, singlehandedly, to strangle what is left of the marginal economic life of the country with decisions that are clearly not aimed at curtailing the spread of the coronavirus.

And now, as past governments have done, it has become routine to borrow to cover revenue shortfalls. As the government is poised to borrow $1.3 billion dollars to ease the current financial pressure it faces, it must ask one question, what is their 10 year plan for preserving our way of life if New Providence should sustain a direct hit by a category 4 or 5 storm this hurricane season, or the next? Borrowing is not enough to fix our medium and long term problems, to think so is the equivalent of putting a band aid on a mortal wound!

JB

Nassau,

May 28, 2020.