While he said he wants Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival to succeed, particularly considering the $9 million the government "threw behind" the festival, PLP Senator Jerome Gomez has questioned why the Christie administration would not spend $10 million or $20 million on small business entrepreneurship.

"What about helping Bahamians own businesses? We just had the last oil company sold last year to a (Barbadian) company. Now, my colleagues tell me there are all sorts of extenuating circumstances why it had to go in that direction, but I don't believe it," Gomez said. "The only way Bahamians are going to make money going forward - big money - is telecommunications, energy, banking and insurance. Those are the things. We have to own the economy."

Gomez appeared on a Guardian Talk Radio program, and admitted that - like the other new members of the Progressive Liberal Party's Parliamentary team - he had, in 2012, imagined things going in a different direction.

"And it's not too late. We still try to fight, [but] I think we didn't get a fair piece of the pie coming in. I think more important positions should be held by a lot more of the young persons. In politics, it's not only young, but new to politics as well," he said.

Create local banks
He also touched on the controversial issue of what the web shops will do with their money, since the Canadian banks and Commonwealth Bank have all said they will not accept web shop money, while Bank of The Bahamas has said that it will. Gomez suggested the possibility of creating Bahamian banks - banks which would have no corresponding relationships with other banks in other jurisdictions - to accept the web shop deposits.

"We can create local banks that don't have any international correlations. They can take Bahamian deposits; they can give Bahamian loans; they can bank with Bahamians. They don't have to send wire transfers, trade in foreign currencies and so forth. We've got to think outside the box, and that's what we're not doing," he said.

"We're losing an opportunity for educated Bahamians who have gone abroad to train to own this economy," Gomez said.

Entrepreneurship
Gomez, who was part of the initial founding of what has become the Bahamas Entrepreneurial Venture Fund, also took his own government to task over its lack of support for local entrepreneurs.

"Foreigners come to this country all the time, start some development, fail and move on. And these developments get sold back and forth, and some never come to fruition. Take the Ginn project in Grand Bahama [for example]. But the first Bahamian business that goes under, that's funded by the government, we condemn all small businesses and therefore we don't want to help anybody. We have to move away from that attitude," Gomez said.

"Some businesses will succeed, and some will fail, but we have to give Bahamians a fair chance to own this economy. And that's where we're failing, you know. Bahamians are not owning this economy, and the government - I must say - is not making the opportunities available for Bahamians to own this economy," the senator asserted.

Gomez also noted that Prime Minister Perry Christie has asserted that Bahamians will own 51 percent of the new company that wins the second mobile license due to be granted before summer 2015.

"Will that happen? Will it happen? We have to be serious that it happens on day one," he said.

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