The Bahamas' economy is in trouble. Construction is at a standstill. Small businesses are failing. Fishermen report this to be the worst crawfish season in memory. The financial services sector is downsizing, tourism performance is weak and the cost of living is rising.
Having presided over an economy that lost 1,260 jobs in its first year in office, the PLP would have us believe that they are adopting policies that are helping to create jobs in an economy that has "turned the corner", as the prime minister has said on more than one occasion. The claim is made in spite of the fact that the employment survey shows that no new jobs have been created since their election. Instead some 1,260 jobs were lost during the PLP's first 12 months in office. Far from creating any of the 10,000 new jobs promised in their first 12 months, the PLP's policies have stalled economic activity, turned back progress being made in growing the economy and contributed to further growth in unemployment.
The Department of Statistics reports show that apart from the year of the Great Recession 2008/09, the Bahamas' economy has consecutively created jobs in each and every year since 1992 until now. Clearly the economy is moving in the wrong direction.
Still in the face of these statistics, the PLP government continues to try to take credit for what its predecessor in office accomplished during terrible economic times.
Lies, damned lies and statistics
When the Department of Statistics in August 2011 released statistics recording a decline in unemployment rates, a chorus of PLP spokespersons, led by the party Chairman Bradley Roberts, attacked the numbers as inaccurate and politically motivated. But when the same department, using the same ILO approved standards of reporting employment levels, showed a continuation in the decline in unemployment six months after the PLP came to office in May 2012, the same litany of PLP spokespersons, new "converts" to having faith in the Department of Statistics, raced to the newspapers to claim the signs of economic recovery were signs that the PLP had placed the economy on the right track.
Unfortunately for these "converts", the recovery reported in November 2012 was an economic recovery occurring up to May of that year; it had nothing to do with what had happened in the economy following the election of the PLP. We now know that the recovery slowed after May 2012, with a loss of 1,260 jobs.
In February 2013, the leader of "the converted", Roberts, applauded the Department of Statistics' numbers, saying that, "This economic recovery also proves that the country is on the right track to full economic recovery and we applaud the 'no new tax' and pro-growth economic policies of the Christie government."
Impact of 2013-2014 Christie tax policy
Of course this was ahead of the Christie government's recent tax increases which astronomically increased the level of taxation on the Bahamian people and very directly on Bahamian business - doubling and tripling business license fees for some of the larger business operators and adding one percent on the cost for all imports to the country. All these new taxes have not only caused an increase in the cost of living for ordinary Bahamians. They have served as a disincentive to both new investment and to additional employment directly contributing to the stall and ultimate decline in job creation in the economy. Daily, there are reports in the newspapers of small Bahamian businesses closing their doors and of others postponing plans for expansion.
These new taxes have been a real drag on the economy which ultimately reflected in unemployment and reduced economic welfare. Furthermore, developments in credit markets have not been favoring economic growth during the PLPs 18 months in office and this too is reflected in the unemployment data and in the economic situation. Domestic credit to the private sector, which is the ultimate driver of economic growth, is presently lower than it was when the PLP came to office in May 2012. The increase in domestic credit of over $300 million which took place during that period was entirely directed to the government sector and principally central government.
PLP apologists and pseudo-economists need not try to stretch our imaginations; the mismanagement of the economy by the PLP is directly connected to the unsatisfactory Bahamian economic situation.
At some point the self-styled economists who continue to berate the Ingraham government for the stellar job it did in bringing the standards of infrastructure around our country up to 21st century world standards will acknowledge that the FNM got it right in creating real legitimate jobs in the economy by investing in projects which represent an enormous expansion in the country's capital assets.
More importantly, the liberalization and modernization of the telecommunications sector and those infrastructure projects, including the dredging of Nassau Harbour, the removal of the cargo port from downtown Nassau, the three-phase redevelopment of Lynden Pindling International Airport, the New Providence road and utilities improvement project and the Airport Gateway Project, when taken together with a better trained workforce, have positioned the Bahamian economy to achieve the maximum benefit from the international economic turnaround as it occurs - so long as this PLP government does not jeopardize the economy's prospects.
Former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham often claimed that the FNM was a sower and the PLP a reaper. This was ironically confirmed by the new PLP member of Parliament for North Abaco who himself described his party as a party of reapers, stating in Parliament just in very recent times that now theirs "is the harvest".
Make the government account
But we should not be satisfied to sit by and allow the government to reap the harvest for their personal benefit. The government may be justifiably asked to account for what it has done with the more than $1 billion it has borrowed since coming to office 18 months ago. After all, it has discontinued the infrastructure improvement program left in train by the FNM. It has chosen to allow all of the jobs and skills training initiatives introduced by the FNM to come to an end without replacements; and its National Training Institute has proven to be a bust.
It is simple logic that all those thousands of people engaged on infrastructure projects which are now completed or in their final stages of completion, and those thousands of others engaged in the various skills and job training initiatives which the PLP has deliberately brought to a close, have swelled the numbers of the unemployed. Surely there is no surprise in the decrease in the numbers of employed persons during their time in office.
Surely, the continuation of important infrastructural upgrade programs for our country would be a far more effective use of borrowed sums than expenditure for consultancy contracts for old PLP hangers-on.
And, continuing training and employment of capable, young Bahamian high school and university graduates who had been productively engaged under the 52-week program in preparation for assuming full-time posts at the new, expanded critical care wing of Princess Margaret Hospital, at the Business Licence Unit of the Ministry of Finance, throughout the government-operated school system and in public corporations would certainly be a more useful expenditure of government revenue than the financing of a seemingly unending list of foreign jaunts by PLP Cabinet ministers.
The PLP has been the government for 18 months; it is time that it stops seeking to take credit for what its predecessors in office did, or attempting to explain its failures as consequences of what its predecessors did, and begin to govern and make decisions to move our economy forward.

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