The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The head of the Chamber of Commerce’s digital transformation committee is urging Bahamians to “reinvent the rules” to revive the economy in a post-COVID-19 environment.

Royann Dean, speaking on a webinar hosted by the Organisation for Responsible Governance (ORG), said: “I think the situation right now is we are going to hit some rough times, let’s be honest about it.

“I think we don’t even have a full awareness of how difficult those times will be. There are businesses that have closed their doors; they have had to lay-off people and furlough workers. Some have closed their doors and have not laid-off people yet, but those things may still happen depending on how long we have these emergency orders and businesses are not allowed to open.”

Ms Dean added: “I don’t think we have seen the full brunt of it yet. I think we are going to be in the trenches for a while still. However, there are opportunities for us to reinvent the rules going forward.

“We have to be smart about what our fiscal policies are. We have to make a decision about whether we invest to stimulate the economy. We have to on the one hand be careful about spending, but on the other hand there is a lot of expenditure that needs to happen in order for us to have some baseline level of activity.”

“It does give us the opportunity to redefine how we look at where we get our economic development from, and technology can play a major part in that. The good part about it is we are not the only country in this situation. There are companies were we can collaborate, and there are benchmarks we can learn from.

“So there are opportunities for us to not be in the trenches as long as we would have been if this would have happened in 2008. I think that climb out of it doesn’t have to be as steep.”

Nicholas Rees, Kanoo’s chief operating officer, added: “We need to change our mindset as a nation. I love the comment Royann said where she said we need to reinvent the rules. What this says is really this is an awakening of the country, of the world essentially, to change the mindset and to re-look at how we do things.

“We no longer need to continue along the traditional norms. We have means, we have access to numerous raw materials, numerous streams of revenue where we can take a country and build in that sustainable finance where we can securitise these stream of assets.”

Mr Rees added, “I think we need more of a shifting in terms of corporate Bahamas and their infrastructural development, and shifting the mindset in the direction of the Family Islands is where we need to go coming out of this.”

“That’s how you get people on the ground working, and you get them in the family islands. Every Family Island should have a private school, a government school, a top-line medical facility, access to medical flights in and out into Nassau, everything tied in with the technology platform.

“I love the positive spin, which is really about changing the mindset. Yes, we are all affected by this. But in great turmoil and trouble is a lot of promise and opportunity. If we look at it from that perspective we can come out of this ten times better than we came in.”