The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

In natural and economic assets, Spanish Wells has very little that every little community in The Bahamas doesn’t. In many ways, it has less.

It has no huge resorts, no offshore banks and no billion-dollar investments. It also has no cruise ships and (thanks to the sovereign thinking of its people) is unlikely to get any anytime soon.

What Spanish Wells appears to have in abundance is cohesion, community spirit and good sense. What it seems to lack is the collective inferiority complex that has been sold to the rest of The Bahamas as “investment policy” since 1992.

We have bought into a relationship with international investors in which our government habitually positions us as beggars, even where what we bring to the table vastly outweighs what is on offer.

Generally, after colluding with self-promoting politicians to produce glossy economic impact projections (which, you will note, never mention projected profits to the investor for reference purposes) the investor walks away with a sweetheart deal so good that he throws in charitable contributions to the happy natives.

What should be taken with deep offence is then sold by politicians as evidence of “delivery” - and the cycle continues.

The cruise industry is perhaps the worst example of this abuse. Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines boasted in its literature that Coco Cay in the Berry Islands was their number one destination on the planet prior to the industry’s post-Covid suspension. Yet they managed to convince Bahamian authorities that they needed vast concessions to induce them to develop it.

Any glance at an atlas will reveal the relative strength of The Bahamas in its relations with the cruise industry – they literally have to sail through it to get to its competitors. Yet our government has done what none of its competitors seem willing to do and given them whole islands, permitting them a whole new level of monopoly over their guests’ wallets – the perennial complaint of portside authorities.

And anybody who sees the aggressive post-Covid planning for The Bahamas by the cruise industry as a straightforward boon to this country is deluded. What it likely represents is a sense of opportunity among industry players at the heightened desperation of local politicians.

Expect ever more one-sided deals dressed up as “game-changers” (a favourite word of empty-headed politicians) and new attempts to blur the line between cruise ships as tourist-carriers and as venues for entertainment, retailing, beach tours and everything else supposedly reserved for Bahamians.

Only when the rest of The Bahamas gains a little bit of what Spanish Wells just demonstrated will we start moving in the right economic direction again.

ANDREW ALLEN

Nassau,

June 13, 2021.