The Tribune

By Diane Phillips

’Twas the day before lockdown

And all through the aisles

Shoppers were frantic

Skipping manners and smiles

Oh, lockdown, oh lockdown, move aside

Up November, December, January they cried

Fly away COVID, fly away flu

We’ve had enough and we’re over you.

It’s easy enough to joke about lockdowns and pretend that if they go away, they’ll carry the coronavirus with them and we can just get on with life as we knew it before.

The problem is after all these long months of full lockdowns, no lockdowns, curfews, restrictions, partial lockdowns and joyful re-openings, we are still experimenting.

Every time we have a hypothesis about how to kill what’s killing us, something comes along and kicks it in the behind. You say that we have to be fluid and dynamic because COVID is fluid and dynamic, not to mention toxic and deadly. It’s already taken 1.12 million lives worldwide, more than 200,000 in the US and 130 as this time of writing. It is little wonder leaders around the globe are wringing their hands, trying to balance the scale between economic collapse and death by disease.

In our desperate search for a success story so we can try whatever method they used to drive the unwanted contagion away, we had a glimmer of hope last week when New Zealand emerged triumphant. The isolated island nation declared it had eliminated the virus. It re-opened its economy and re-elected its Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in a landslide and among thunderous applause while Ardern warned the country would remain vigilant.

We celebrate New Zealand’s victory. It gives us a feeling of hope. We wonder, is there a lesson we can learn from the New Zealand experiment? Or is there as much to learn from countries that are living with COVID but managing because their basket contains more than one big fat fickle egg? (No offence, Minister, it’s not your fault.)

So here, for what it is worth, is this former journalist’s take on what we can learn from the success or failure of others and how best we can apply it in a country at disproportionately higher risk from COVID-19 given a population riddled with underlying conditions.

Take a quick virtual tour and check the figures. Tourist hotspots have been hit hard, yet few have been hit as hard as The Bahamas. Why? Because our number one economic driver is the overwhelming producer of jobs and without visitors, we have little fuel to keep the engine of the nation running. In case there is any doubt, compare The Bahamas with these examples. In Mexico, the number one destination for tourists from the United States outside their country, tourism is huge. Yet it accounts for just 8.2 percent of the country’s GDP. Italy, the fifth most visited country in the world, boasts of its booming tourist industry, yet that sector accounts for just 13 percent of the country’s GDP. In Spain, tourism accounts for 11 percent, Portugal a slightly lower figure.

Each one of those popular hotspots has more going for it than the people who drop in for a short while. Visitors and the business they drive from aviation to ports, hotels, restaurants, entertainment, retail and services add depth to the economy but they do not drive it almost singlehandedly.

The most potent antidote to any economic threat is diversification.

If COVID-19 teaches us anything, it is that agriculture, horticulture, mariculture and marine resources are not an adjunct, but a critical path forward. Right-priced, right-built and right-marketed real estate, development, commercial and residential projects, open to those local or from abroad who respect the Bahamian environment and culture, must be encouraged and incentivized with small island sustainability uppermost on the agenda. Boutique, niche market projects on Family Islands, especially for long-term stay, must be tax incentivized. A tech hub, business aviation complex, electric vehicles, light manufacturing all deserve careful attention.

We are rich in the arts and poor in creating space for them to flourish, rich in talent and latent entrepreneurship and poor in providing capital. We have a world of possibilities at our feet and we keep looking to a model created more than half a century ago. And what’s really interesting is that developing these other sectors only serves to make us more interesting to those who come by air or sea. We just won’t be so dependent upon their arrival that when they don’t come, our cupboards are bare and our government is forced to borrow. And if we show those cruise passengers more of the arts and culture, more tours of farmland and more undersea wonders, we may find they stay longer next time.

Finally, there is a lesson to be learned from New Zealand and it is this, in almost the exact words of its popular Prime Minister who said she “makes no apologies”. The country got a grip on COVID-19 when it hit. Worried about health facilities being overwhelmed, it slammed its border shut in March. One month of serious lockdown followed, after which it introduced strict travel policies and strategies based on science and testing ability.

New Zealand with a diversified economy had a plan and stuck with it. Diversification plus strategic planning, sounds so yawn-worthy.

So what’s new? Only the punch in the jaw that made us open our eyes.

And the worry about oil grows

Three days ago, inspectors from Trinidad and Tobago made their way to the Gulf of Paria, a vast body of water lying between their islands and Venezuela.

Their task – to determine if an all but abandoned tanker carrying 55 million gallons of crude oil was in imminent danger of sinking and spilling its unwanted crude in the Caribbean. The huge hulk of the Venezuelan-flagged ship carrying crude for an Italian supplier had been sitting there for 20 months ever since Donald Trump imposed sanctions that rendered the crude unprofitable.

If the ship were to break apart, sink and disgorge the oil in its tanks, the leak would create a spill five times greater than the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound off the coast of Alaska in 1989, More than 30 years later, the fishing industry is still recovering.