Thoughts from Tradewinds
Recent blogs, "Potholes in Paradise", and "Heritage Horror", described the terrible reality of failing Infrastructure in the Bahamas which now has reached the stage of being a national tragedy.. Any country, without reliable, modern and well maintained infrastructure, will find it almost impossible to attract much needed foreign capital, investment and technical assistance.. These problems of continued neglect are compounding daily and are an impediment and detriment to attracting much needed technical support and direct investment.. Today our roads are full of crater sized potholes while the traffic control systems (traffic lights) are often broken down and are mostly out of sink to traffic volume,. Our BPL power grid blackouts, brownouts and transformer/generator breakdowns are an ongoing occurrence.. Our antiquated, in need of capital replacement and maintenance, BTC telephone system frequently drops important calls and often breaks down going out-of-order.. Then there is the failing Post Office Service where it takes sometimes weeks to a few months to deliver local bank statements, BEC and BTC invoices and important international mail.. Eight weeks is far to long to wait to receive An American Express invoice.. Finally, our once customer orientated banking system is rapidly going to hell as we often have to wait near 30 minutes or more just to cash a check, get an account balance or make a simple bank deposit.. These ongoing failures and breakdowns in our nation's underlying Infrastructure has become an outright national embarrassment..
One has to logically question now what type of reputable foreign corporations would want to choose to establish a business site or domicile here in the Bahamas?? Give our high cost/ low productivity labour output, sub-standard educational performance and well over eleven paid national holidays every year combined with other costly employee benefits and excessive government regulations and fees makes for a rather expensive and negative investment climate..
This must be changed at once.. Government must give high priority to address, fix and maintain our broken down basic Infrastructure.. Systems also must be put-into-place to remove trash, garbage, abandoned and broken down cars, etc. to bring back our once lovely physical environment.. We want again to be able to feel a strong sense of personal pride in the country that is our homeland.. Once the Infrastructure issues have been fixed and maintained, we will have a far better opportunity in attracting direct foreign investment to our shores.. As for turning around our high cost/ labour productivity performance and poor educational achievement, these issues perhaps in the short-run are best addresses by corporate in house and external training programs that will change overall work ethics and negative attitudes.. These priorities must be addressed in order to begin to move the nation's economy forward and hopefully begin to drive real economic growth.. Government good will trips overseas are worthwhile but only as long as you have something creditable to offer and that is in demand.. Least we not forget that a nation's reputation and integrity always proceeds any goodwill sojourns abroad seeking to attract and entice investment support and technical assistance to the Bahamas..
