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Monday, July 6, 2026
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Taxpayers put on hook for $105m guarantees BY NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net BAHAMAS POWER & LIGHT HEADQUARTERS
BPL pain failure: $38m arrears left despite 163% hike BY NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE pain inflicted on Bahamian businesses and consumers by up to 163 percent hikes in BPL’s fuel charges failed to achieve the Government’s goal of wiping out the utility’s fuel arrears as a near-$38m unpaid bill remained. The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority’s (URCA), in an eight-page summary on the probe it commissioned into Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) so-called 2022-2024 ‘glide path’ strategy, which was implemented to recoup under-recovered fuel costs, reveals that it missed the Davis administration’s main objective of eradicating unpaid arrears that peaked at close to $120m in February 2023.
URCA pledges new fuel charge regulations in 2027 The report also affirmed that the burden imposed on BPL customers, namely Bahamian businesses and consumers, to pay-off the utility’s past due fuel bills to its supplier, Shell, “became onerous”. And this impact “was magnified” because the Davis administration and BPL elected to impose the peak hike - an up to 163 percent increase in the latter’s fuel charge compared to October 2022 levels - between June and August 2023, when summer consumption was at its highest. URCA’s summary also backed the former Minnis administration
PROBE - See Page B8
Gov’t insurance resumption ‘test’ amid $100m concerns BY NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net A BAHAMIAN surgeon yesterday said the Government’s pledge that health insurance coverage for hundreds of public sector workers has “resumed” will be “tested” today amid assertions that premium payment arrears could be as high as $100m. Dr Duane Sands, also the Opposition’s chairman, told Tribune Business that an open heart surgery he is due to perform today on a patient from one of the impacted government agencies has been “put back on schedule” after initially being cancelled/[postponed
on Friday after it emerged that the medical coverage provided by Colina Insurance Company had been suspended for hundreds. Public sector union leaders accused the Government of playing with the lives and health of their members, including hundreds in the uniformed security services who place themselves in potential harm’s way daily, prompting Senator Latrae Rahming, communications director in the Prime Minister’s Office, to describe the “temporary suspension” of health insurance coverage as “an administrative matter involving co-ordination
CARE - See Page B9
URCA backs Cable, BTC on local satellite ‘contact’ BY NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net REGULATORS have accepted arguments from Cable Bahamas and the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) that they should retain the power to mandate that satellite operators appoint a local representative over the latter industry’s opposition. The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA), unveiling the results of its consultation on the proposed regulatory framework for satellite
operators providing Internet and other services into The Bahamas, said the issue of whether it should have the ability to require such providers to establish a local ‘point-of-contact’ for supervisory purposes was the source of greatest division between the industry and its terrestrial rivals. It ultimately decided to take BTC and Cable Bahamas’ advice, and retain such power - but only to be used on a risk-based basis according to the potential dangers a particular operator and its activities
PROVIDE - See Page B12
BAHAMIAN taxpayers have quietly been placed on the hook for a further $105m in government borrowing guarantees needed to underwrite new debt, refinance existing liabilties and pay-off prior defaults by the Bahamas Mortgage Corporation and Education Loan Authority (ELA). Three borrowing resolutions, part of a seven-strong package introduced in, and passed, by the House of Assembly immediately after the Budget debate completed on Thursday, June 18, commit the Bahamian people - in their capacity as taxpayers - to step in and pay these debt obligations should either agency default on repayment to lenders who include the National Insurance Board (NIB) and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Opposition MPs contacted by Tribune Business after it uncovered the borrowing resolutions, which have now been approved by Parliament, told this newspaper that they were another example of the Davis administration “governing in the dark”. Adrian White, the St Anne’s MP and leader of Opposition business in the House, said he and fellow FNM MPs were only told
Mortgage Corp, Education Loan Authority ‘slipped in’ at Budget end Near-$25m NIB refinancings as resolutions admit repaying ‘difficulty’
KWASI THOMPSON
Opposition renews accusations of Gov’t of ‘operating in the dark’ about the resolutions on the day they were passed - right at the end of the Budget debate. While the possibility of government guarantees for both Mortgage Corporation and Education Loan Authority financing during the 2026-2027 fiscal year was signalled in the Budget documents, the Government did not confirm its intentions to proceed until the last minute. “A Government guarantee refers to debt obligations for which the Government of The Bahamas has provided a legally binding commitment to assume repayment in the event of default by the borrowing entity,” the Budget affirmed.
DR DUANE SANDS The first of two Mortgage Corporation resolutions underwrites the issuance of $15m in new “government guaranteed” bonds to NIB “to satisfy” the agency’s obligations to the nation’s social security system. And it also provides for the further issuance of new bonds to refinance some $61.5m of existing debt securities whose
BONDS - See Page B5