business@tribunemedia.net
MONDAY, JANUARY 27, 2020
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$100m tax giveback suffers Dorian blow By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
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URRICANE Dorian’s financial fall-out has placed the government’s plan to return $100m to the Bahamian people through “significant tax cuts� in doubt, the deputy prime minister has revealed. K Peter Turnquest told Tribune Business that the magnitude of the category five storm’s fiscal blow meant the Minnis administration had no choice but to “reassess� the pledge it made when unveiling the 60 percent VAT rate hike during the 2018-2019 budget.
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Economy ‘running on 30% efficiency’
K PETER TURNQUEST
• Govt must ‘reassess’ pledge to Bahamian people • ‘Not off table’ but 2021 timeline likely delayed • $975m P3 offer must ‘fit’ PPP policy terms In explaining that the increased 12 percent VAT rate was necessary to payoff a $360m backlog of unfunded government bills over a three-year period, Mr Turnquest at that time voiced optimism that the government would be able to return some of this tax hike to the Bahamian people through $100m worth of Customs duties reductions from 2021-2022 onwards. However, he conceded last week that the unforeseen multi-billion dollar hole
created by Dorian meant the government has to look at its short to medium-term fiscal strategy anew. While such tax cuts, which were to take effect one year from now, are “not necessarily off the table�, the deputy prime minister signalled they may have to be delayed until there is sufficient “room� to accommodate them. With the government set to seek House of Assembly approval to borrow $508m when Parliament resumes on Wednesday, Mr
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Turnquest said Dorian had likely “set us back three to four years� on its fiscal turnaround plan and blown the consolidation strategy offcourse by five. “We set out a plan for the Bahamian people that would have seen some significant tax reductions over the next few years,� he told this newspaper. “A year from now they would have started to see some significant tax reductions, but we
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By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
THE Bahamian economy is “running on 30 percent efficiency� because of its public education woes, a governance reformer has warned, arguing that these have placed “the entire nation in peril�. Robert Myers, the Organisation for Responsible Governance’s (ORG) principal, told Tribune Business that the government needed to “stop sucking as much money out of the private sector as they can without collapsing the economy� and instead start rewarding companies that established their own workforce training initiatives with tax credits. Revealing that ORG itself
ROBERT MYERS currently has a proposal before the government to establish a “vocational school in the hospitality space�, he urged the Minnis administration to address “a national crisis� in workforce productivity and training rather than keep hitting the private sector with “more taxes�. ORG had teamed with the Bahamas Technical and
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Outrage at Abaco tourism omission By YOURI KEMP Tribune Business Reporter ykemp@tribunemedia.net
A FURIOUS South Abaco tourism business is blasting the Ministry of Tourism for “scrubbing� the island’s portal from its website, arguing that this threatens “to tear us down even further� post-Dorian,. Michael Dillon, president of Abaco Yacht & Charter Services, in an open letter to Dionisio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism, said the decision to seemingly remove Abaco from the Ministry’s Bahamas.com
website would only cause “much confusion and damage�. He wrote: “I woke this morning only to read on social media that your ministry has not only forgotten about, but has appeared to completely scrub, the Abacos from the Ministry of Tourism website of The Bahamas. This act has, and will continue to cause, much confusion and damage to the Abacos and those that are looking to travel here.� He continued: “Two years ago Francesca and I started
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Bahamas in Fintech ‘first for Caribbean’ By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
CORPORATE loan rejection rates in The Bahamas are double those in other Caribbean countries, it has been revealed, resulting in financial technology (Fintech) being deployed to boost capital access. An Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) paper on the $1.3m Accelerate Bahamas initiative, which is designed to further boost support for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises
(MSMEs), said the planned Fintech platform will enable start-ups and entrepreneurs to “engage� with potential equity and debt financing partners.  The “system algorithm� will match an investors’ risk profile/investment criteria with entrepreneurs in a “first of its kind for the Caribbean�, with all parties “vetted� by the Small Business Development Centre (SBDC) and relevant financial regulators. The former
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