NASSAU, Bahamas – The Bahamas has employed a number of mitigating measures to alleviate the short-term negative shock to highly vulnerable sectors of the society occasioned by the global economic crisis, Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Hubert Ingraham said.
Speaking at the Regional Forum on the Occasion of the Inter-American Development Bank’s 50th Anniversary in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Friday,July 17 he told delegates that for the first time The Bahamas has put in place an unemployment benefit system.
“Our social safety net has been bolstered through increased social service benefits to the most vulnerable in our society,” he explained. “The Government has taken steps to minimize the adverse effects of high electricity costs.”
So to preserve jobs and create new employment opportunities, the Government has accelerated a number of planned infrastructural projects including major road and port improvements, the construction of the Nassau straw market, and accelerated construction or completion of a number of government office complexes, Mr Ingraham said.
Additional road works and general environment upgrade of parks and other recreational facilities around the country are also being undertaken.
“The Government has put in place incentives to encourage the private sector to use the period of the downturn to upgrade and reposition their business enterprises, better positioning themselves to take advantage of the economic turn around when it occurs,” he said.
“Importantly, The Bahamas has forged ahead with initiatives to better rationalize our tax regime, improve efficiencies and strengthen our financial regulatory framework.”
While focused on devising measures to mitigate the effects of the crisis and exploring means of strengthening the country’s financial regulatory framework, the Government is fully conscious of the origins of the global crisis and the need for reform of the international financial architecture to meet the interests of both developed and developing countries, Mr Ingraham said.
A reform of special interest to small Caribbean economies as it relates to a level playing field in the provision of international financial services, he said, “is increasingly important to us in light of the limited scope for our structurally dependent economies to diversify.”
Already many Caribbean countries have expended “considerable resources” in reforming the financial services sector, beginning in 1999, with particular attention to improving regulation and transparency and in facilitating effective exchange of information, he said.
The Bahamas is firmly committed to ensuring that its financial services sector meets evolving international best standards, Mr Ingraham stressed.
“However, this becomes increasingly difficult as the developed/industrialized countries appear to move the goal posts for international financial centres at will and without regard to lower standards being observed in their own jurisdiction,” Mr Ingraham said.
The financial services sector provides important employment for developing world professionals – lawyers, accountants, insurance and investment specialists, bankers – many of whom would be otherwise lost through “brain drain” to the developed world, he said.
“The cost of losing professionals to the developed world is greater than the loss of the individuals,” he said. “In far too many instances, the individual will have been educated and trained at public expense.
“There is a clear and urgent need for real reform that will create a more robust global financial system and a more enduring world economy capable of lifting all peoples to higher standards of living,” he said.
The Government supports the response of the Inter-American Development Bank to the current global economic crisis, Mr Ingraham said.
“As the only multilateral institution from which The Bahamas can access funding the IDB’s adjusted policies and programs are welcomed.
“The need to replenish the Bank’s Ordinary Capital and Funds for Special Projects in light of the current global economic crisis is supported by The Bahamas,” he told delegates.“We urge all developed countries, who qualify to increase the Bank’s resources…and to accept that action is needed now.”
