Economics professor, former dean of The College of The Bahamas (COB) School of Business and Principal of Sir Arthur Lewis College in St. Lucia Dr. Olivia Saunders said The Bahamas has not been receiving the spillover effects of foreign direct investment (FDI), citing the absence of "technology and knowledge transfers" as a major lack.
Saunders, who had been one of the final two choices for president of COB, has just launched a new thesis on rethinking economic principles called "Tomato Economics". She spoke with Guardian Business in the sidelines of the book launch about the absence of the preferred hallmarks of efficient use of FDI.
"If we have really been getting the benefits of FDIs, seeing that we have been getting it for over a century, we should be able to have all those spillover effects of technology and knowledge transfers," she said.
She added, "We obviously don't have the knowledge transfer because we don't have the proliferation of Bahamians owning and operating industries where we have the FDIs."
Saunders suggested an alternative view as to how Bahamians are benefiting from foreign direct investments.
According to Saunders, FDI should be complementary to what Bahamians want as a people, not Bahamians adjusting themselves to what the investor wants.
"When you have FDIs, as seen in Baha Mar, they have to bring their own people, and then you look at the type of investment that comes in," she said, raising the questions: "Are the vast majority high paying jobs, or are they minimum wage type jobs? Is the purpose of the FDI to afford opportunities to become wealthy, or is it for us to afford opportunities to get jobs?
"Workers or employees seldom become rich in a capitalist society," she said. "In a capital world, it is the owners of capital that become wealthy, so the extent to which we are not owners of capital is the extent to which we are not going to become wealthy in a capitalist society."
Saunders' book, "Tomato Economics", proposes an alternative view of economics, one beginning with the premise that "there is enough", as opposed to the prevailing view of economics as the division and use of scarce resources. She has been asked during her tenure at Sir Arthur Lewis College to guide that institution to four year, degree-granting status.
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