The Hon. Zhivargo Laing, Minister of State for Finance and the Member of Parliament for Marco City touted the virtues of Grand Bahama for investing and tourism at meetings held in Calgary, Albertha, Canada on Monday, March 28th, 2010 at the exclusive Petroleum Club. Minister Laing told audiences of investors, lawyers, accountants, financial services experts, realtors and residents of Calgary that, “The Bahamas has twenty-nine of its seven hundred islands inhabited. One of those inhabited islands is Grand Bahama, on which resides the nation’s second city of Freeport, itself a unique enclave. Freeport is a privately developed and operated city through a unique agreement between the developers, the Grand Bahama Port Authority and the Government spanning some 99 years of leasehold.”

Pointing to the potential of Freeport to accommodate new development, Minister Laing told his Calgary audiences that “Freeport has fully developed air, sea, road and utility infrastructure to accommodate the needs of some 250,000 people notwithstanding the population is now only 50,000.” He further noted, “It has one of the world’s most significant container transshipment facilities, the world’s largest ship repair facility and the only privately owned international airport in the world. It is the industrial centre of The Bahamas and uniquely placed to entertain such investments, given its free trade zone status in the country.”

Not leaving out the other parts of Grand Bahama, Laing said to the Canadian groupings that, “While Freeport is the economic centre of the island of Grand Bahama, the island’s East and West flanks almost offer unique opportunities for investing and conducting business.” Informing the Canadian potential investors that the largest concentration of Canadians in The Bahamas reside in Freeport, Laing also said that should they decide to seek investment opportunities in Grand Bahama, the Government would do all in its power to facilitate them. Calgary is an oil and gas rich territory in Western Canada with direct airlift through West Jet to The Bahamas. Also present at the meetings were private sector representatives from various industries in Grand Bahama, including Kevin Semour of Price Waterhouse Coopers, Raymond Jones President of BORCO, ….

Laing said that drumming up new investments and economic activity for Grand Bahama is important and that this and other missions are planned to do just that. Minister Laing spoke during the Trade and Investment Mission led by Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham on margins of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Annual Meetings attended by the two finance ministers.