by Rick Lowe
After several months, September 2006 to be precise, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was finally able to provide a breakdown of the trade numbers with China as announced by Mr. Fred Mitchell, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
See this blog for the details but you might recall the Minister announced $150 million in trade between China and The Bahamas during 2005 and when we pointed out that this was hyperbole because it included some $125 million for ships that are registered in The Bahamas but not imported as such, we received a sardonic response through a web site (Bahamas Uncensored) that could be written by the Minister himself.
We are pleased to share the totals as provided by the Chinese Embassy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as follows:
Download Trade.pdf by clicking here.
As one can see, there is a total of $128,778,885 for vehicles, shipping and transportation equipment. For the sake of argument lets say that only $125 million of this number is for ships not actually imported into The Bahamas, that means trade between China and The Bahamas totalled some $29,649,773 during 2005.
$29 million plus in trade is nothing to scoff at for our little country, but maybe that does not make a good enough sound bite for a Minister of Foreign Affairs who dabbles in public relations.