The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A former Cabinet minister yesterday said Moody’s forecast of 3 percent economic growth for The Bahamas in 2023 is “nothing strange” and reflects the country’s reversion to traditional performance after the post-COVID recovery.

Zhivargo Laing, former minister of state for finance, told Tribune Business that the gross domestic product (GDP) growth prediction by Moody’s was in line with his own projection for this calendar year. It also matches the revised estimate given by John Rolle, the Central Bank of The Bahamas’ governor.

“That’s in line with what I have been saying, and others like the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) have been saying, for some time,” he said. “The Bahamas’ ordinary growth rate pre-pandemic has been around 2 percent, and slightly under 2 percent and, on extraordinary occasions, 3 percent or so. So this is just a return to normalcy.

“All of that growth that we saw as we turned the economy up in the waning days of the pandemic, that was just reflective really of a recovery born of the fact that you had artificially turned down your economy and you are just now turning it back up, so we’re just seeing the economy get back to its normal place.”

Tourism’s recovery has largely driven the growth resurgence, with stopover visitor numbers some two percent below pre-COVID numbers for 2019 in August. Chester Cooper, deputy prime minister, and minister of tourism, investments and aviation, is predicting The Bahamas will receive 8m visitors in 2023.

Mr Laing said tourism’s rebound means there is “nothing strange” about Moody’s forecast. He added: “I had predicted this for some time now, and the prediction was correct to return to that normal growth in 2024.”

As for the Government’s refinancing, or rollover, of $2.2bn in debt maturities, he added: “It all depends on the Government’s financing objectives for managing its debt. You use various avenues of financing, depending on which one of them offers you the best pricing and the best structuring for your cash flow. So it depends on what they see, and what they think is most appropriate, given the objectives that they have.”