The Tribune

THE Budget being presented today may just be the most important in modern times for The Bahamas.

Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis may be wanting to present some sweeteners with election talk still swirling around the nation – but with the economy treading water at best, that won’t be easy.

Still, he will take some comfort from some positive signs on today’s front page. The biggest news is that cruise sailings will resume, with a Fourth of July to remember for both American guests on board and Bahamians ready to welcome them to their businesses.

The other news sees a new $100m loan from the World Bank that will help keep us afloat until our ship comes in.

That’s extra debt, of course, and will need to be paid back, but it will help to keep supporting people who are out of work, to pay for food programmes and unemployment assistance, and keep people alive until the sputtering economy can roar into life once more.

There should be no mistake, though – we are still in deep water and getting the economy going again has to be the start and the end of the agenda for Dr Minnis in this Budget.

We have faced a long haul – and it has been longer still for those who have been laid off or furloughed during this pandemic.

That has had a knock-on effect with people trying to put food on the table unable to pay other bills. Revenue has been down across the board, and that means less money in the government’s kitty to use for other purposes – from pre-election appetisers to long-planned programmes that have had to sit on the shelf with no money to pay for them.

There’s no magic wand. No matter what Dr Minnis has to offer in today’s Budget, it won’t be able to reverse the damage our economy has suffered on its own.

In fact, the biggest weapon we have to solve that won’t be in Dr Minnis’ briefcase, it’s the one waiting for people to have injected in clinics and centres across The Bahamas. The vaccine for COVID-19 is the biggest protection against the virus, and the surest way to reduce the spread and to give a path to reopening the economy.

Dr Minnis has had big decisions to make ahead of this Budget – as would any leader in his situation. We hope he has made the right choices to set the economy on the right course through these troubled waters.

But we also have to make the right choices ourselves – and that starts with getting the vaccine. On an individual level, it could save your life. For our society, it could save our economy.

BPL woes

This may sound a familiar question, but what on earth is going on with Bahamas Power and Light?

After a better summer last year – and goodness knows it needed to be after the one before – this year is starting to have some wobbles. There were problems with fuel contamination and then, on May 20, an island-wide outage.

What was the cause? Your guess is as good as ours. Wartsila, the company with a deal to maintain and operate the Clifton Pier Station A Power Plant, released a statement blaming an “operational glitch”, which is about as unhelpful an explanation as you could wish for. We would also hope it takes more than a “glitch” to blackout the island.

Works Minister Desmond Bannister, meanwhile, said that BPL will have to hold accountable those responsible for the outage. Responsible? So it wasn’t a glitch but someone was to blame? We’d like a little more information about that.

Sadly, Mr Bannister is not sharing, merely saying that he expects that the CEO of BPL or those responsible will issue the appropriate releases.

For their part, BPL issued a statement without explanation, merely saying that Wartsila was investigating with the goal of making sure it wouldn’t happen again.

People are tired of years of BPL disruption. A full explanation is the least that people deserve. Dare we say, we would hope a little light is shed on the situation.

In the midst of the worst of the BPL problems, we were promised one more summer of disruption and then things would get better. We had that summer – and things have improved. It’s one achievement the FNM can point to and say that it has made a difference during the government’s time in power. Losing that achievement could mean it’s lights out on the party’s election hopes.