The Bahamas is in need of "painful, radical surgery" if it is to reverse the economic stagnation the country has endured, Minister of State for Investments Khaalis Rolle stated yesterday.
Speaking during a Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) luncheon, Rolle said that developing local arbitration and alternative dispute resolution offers a platform for "real diversification" of the legal services sector.
Stressing the need for bipartisan support, Rolle suggested that a unified approach to cultivating arbitration opportunities - including firm government backing - is needed to ensure that CIArb and government aspirations for a regional arbitration hub are not merely a pipedream.
"Whomever has to manage this country will manage the same set of circumstances, and if we treat cancer with tablets, then we're perishable. The opportunity that I see from what CIArb is doing is that it's innovative; it's a platform for real diversification and actually adds a new revenue line for the country.
"We have to use this opportunity - and the government has to support it, and this is a message that I will take back - that we're on to something here. This is real opportunity, we just have to harvest this opportunity," he said.
Rolle's comments come as the Christie administration proceeds with its National Development Plan (NDP), which in part is designed to pinpoint growth opportunities in the local economy. The NDP team is currently winding down the project's diagnostic phase and will soon launch widespread consultations across various sectors of the economy as well as civil society. Although only small fragments of the NDP's findings have been disclosed, Rolle has suggested that the early results of data compilation are sobering.
"We now have a comprehensive and integrated understanding of where we are... As a country, we can't treat the symptoms without understanding the underlying pathology.
"We need radical surgery, and radical surgery is painful, very painful. We have to understand and accept the fact that in order to get the country that we want, we have to perform some radical surgery," he said.
Rolle and Minister of Financial Services Hope Strachan yesterday addressed CIArb members, touching on the government's current road map for developing an arbitration hub in The Bahamas, which will include a new suite of consultations with international arbitration specialists and a push for greater cooperation with the local judiciary.
Prime Minister Perry Christie was expected to elaborate on how to ensure adequate financing for developing arbitration opportunities in The Bahamas at the event but he did not attend.
"If you continue to make decisions in isolation, in silos, you will continue to have the law of diminishing returns take effect. The more money we spend, the more laws we change, more of the same, what do you think the results will be? It's not the same; it's getting worse," Rolle stated.
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