The Tribune

IT will come as no surprise to anyone that bureaucracy in The Bahamas can be a hindrance to investment.

We have seen it many times – from investment by foreigners to projects launched by ourselves that get tangled up in government red tape, leaving people waiting and waiting for approval that seems as if it will never come, even when every box has been ticked.

So a new report, prepared for the COVID Economic Recovery Committee, is singing a familiar song when it says that the investment approvals mechanism “is manually intensive and lacks transparency.”

The report goes on to say that the Bahamas Investment Authority should be fully digitised so that processes are more efficient, and – crucially – that politicians should play a lesser role in the investment approvals process.

Currently, that refers to the National Economic Council (NEC), which is the Cabinet or a committee of Cabinet. It means that politicians get involved over which investment goes ahead or does not.

At best, that means the process can lengthen what is described as a haphazard process. At worst, it could be opening the door to the possibility of corruption. Too often over too many years, we have heard stories of backhanders – so why not eliminate layers that aren’t needed for smaller investments?

For investors, having cleared all the hurdles before reaching the NEC, they often find themselves having to clear the same hurdles all over again as the process is duplicated.

And let’s face it, if we ensure our civil service can handle the investments process, why do the politicians need to get involved? After all, some of them don’t know the process themselves, some have just been elected – some don’t even know the rules over financial declarations despite being told.

Smoothing the process should be the goal for easing investment – as long as it follows the rules, including for the environment when it comes to any construction. Choosing not to smooth the process makes one wonder who stands to gain from making the process slower, less transparent and harder to navigate.

So we look forward to seeing how this administration responds to the suggestions put forward. The crucial point of this can be seen in the name of the committee that has created the report, the COVID Economic Recovery Committee. This comes at a time when we need to kickstart all the investment we can get, to get people back in jobs and to get the nation over the financial losses suffered in the pandemic.

Get the roadblocks to investment out of the way – and let everyone know how the process works from start to finish.

Crazy contracts

A former Bahamas Power and Light managerial union chief is seeking to appeal a verdict that cut his award for termination compensation to 18 months – from 74 months.

74 months? That’s more than six years in compensation payments! If this is general policy at BPL, is it any wonder it’s having trouble finding money to pay for maintenance?

The man, Ervin Dean, who was senior manager of credit and collections, claims that BPL had an established practice of fully compensating terminated managerial personal for the entire length of their contract period.

So if you work, you get paid, and if you don’t work, you still get paid.

Mr Dean of course will have his opportunity to challenge the compensation ruling in court – but for any future such cases, we hope BPL is ensuring such nonsense can never happen again.

Don’t come talking to us about increasing bills when money is flowing out of the door like water.