The Tribune

BY FAY SIMMONS

TRIBUNE Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

THE BAHAMAS is taking a cautious approach to attracting data centres due to the demands they will impose on already-strained electricity, water and other infrastructure resources, a Cabinet minister said last night.

Sbas Bastian, minister of innovation and national development, said the Government was developing a broader digital infrastructure strategy centred on boosting domestic computing capacity while avoiding a rush to attract large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) facilities that could place additional pressure on struggling resources.

“Our strategy, as we approach our data centre strategy, is first, it's going to be rooted in sovereignty,” said Mr Bastian. “We have to ensure that we have a local sovereign compute power available domestically.”

He added that The Bahamas will not seek to become a hyper-scale data centre jurisdiction simply for the sake of attracting large investments, arguing that the country's appeal to international businesses had historically been based on factors such as its proximity to the US, English-speaking population, political stability and regulatory framework.

“On the backstop of that, that's going to be kind of our AI data centre strategy - not big monstrous ones, but ones that have the compute power, that have the regulatory framework that's attractive to the international community that wants to put their data in The Bahamas,” said Mr Bastian.

He added that the Government will consider larger proposals on their individual merits, particularly where developers could provide the power generation required without placing additional strain on the national grid.

“If there is a proposal and somebody wants to build a hyper-scale data centre in Andros, there's an abundance of water, which there is, and they want to make the investment and put the power plant that's necessary, and it's not a strain on our grid, we would look at proposals on the individual merit, but holistically and how it impacts our environment and our country as a whole,” Mr Bastian said.

He added that there would be limits to what can be accommodated on New Providence. “There's no hyper-scale data centre that can ever come in New Providence unless they build their own power station to complement it with,” the minister said.

He added that water availability will also have to be considered before large-scale data-centre development could proceed. “Data centres, especially AI data centres, require power and water. Both of those things have to be made available before any aspiration for a data centre is possible,” said Mr Bastian.

He said the Government is also looking to establish a legislative framework that would make The Bahamas attractive to companies seeking to house data locally.

“We're going to start with legislation because we know that if we get legislation right, the attractiveness of the jurisdiction for companies, international companies, local companies to house their data in the data centres here is going to be based on reliability and legislative framework that is attractive,” said Mr Bastian.

He added that the Davis administration is not opposed to hyper-scale facilities being developed elsewhere in The Bahamas, but would assess their wider impact rather than actively pursuing them.

“We're not against hyper-scale centres possibly coming to somewhere in The Bahamas, but they will be analysed on their own merit, their own individual impact,” he said.

Mr Bastian said the wider objective was to ensure that businesses, citizens and the Government itself have access to domestic AI computing capacity. “We do know that there's no version of a modern society where domestically AI compute power in a country is unavailable for businesses and citizens and governments alike,” he said.