The Bahamas Real Estate Association (BREA) is throwing its support behind the e-government platform, as it attempts to make doing business easier in The Bahamas.
BREA President Franon Wilson commended the initiative yesterday as the association hosted its first Inter-island Webinar & Conference at the Balmoral Club.
He pointed out that the option for people to pay their real property tax online has benefitted those in the real estate industry, whether it's a small or large firm.
"This is huge for people who have clients overseas who can pay real property tax by using their computers... The reality is for smaller firms in particular, in some cases one-man operations, now they can have the access to all of this information whereas in the past the larger companies may have had an advantage, because they had access and smaller companies did not. This is now literally making a situation whereby smaller and larger businesses will be able to have a leg up and compete to show what they can do."
Carol Roach, deputy director of information technology in the Ministry of Finance, was one of the presenters at Tuesday's half-day session. According to her, the biggest use of the real property tax service online has been international. She called it a "real plus for BREA members".
"When it comes to their clients being able to pay real property tax, we have a lot of foreigners investing in land and they always find it difficult to send in a check or a draft to pay for it. Our biggest users of the real property tax online service had been our international clients, so for BREA members, it's a real plus," she noted.
Roach admitted that the e-government platform got off to a slow start when it was initially launched in July 2011. However, that started to change when the site allowed people to pay their real property taxes online as of January 2012.
Since then there has been steady growth, with approximately 200 people registering on a monthly basis, adding to the more than 5,000 registrants.
There are already plans to add more services to the site including business license, citizen and business hubs and immigration services.
"We actually have the business license online service but you know there has been change in some laws so we have to revamp that in order to accommodate the new law. Another big one that persons are always asking for is the immigration services, so we are working on some of those services to come online as well," Roach added.
"In order to have services that rely on each other to be able to operate together as a one stop, I need to be able to identify a citizen. We need a hub that can do that. The business hub is the same thing, I need to know how to identify businesses. Once we have these hubs that can identify people then it's easier to have cross-agency collaboration, not only internal agencies but also quasi-government agencies, so it will make it easier to work with."
The half-day session provided current information on issues affecting the real estate industry. "We are grateful that various entities and organizations, including BREA, have been receptive to the launch of the government's e-portal, and more specifically, and the ways in which individuals can conduct business in a more efficient way in The Bahamas," Roach said.
"It's also refreshing that BREA is utilizing technology in relaying information to its members by online and video conferencing, proving that geography is no longer a limiting factor in gaining information."
Realtors and agents throughout The Bahamas accessed the conference via a web-based link, which was the first of its kind for the association.
The government's e-government platform provides links to services in every government agency and department, 365 governmental forms along with current news, access to legislation, news from the Family Islands, health information and a secure means for online bill payment.
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