In his address to the Business Outlook Seminar on Monday, Prime Minister Perry Christie sent a clear signal to investors that The Bahamas was opened for business to foreigners with clean money to invest.
Millions of investment dollars, presumably, are just waiting to pour into the Bahamian economy, Christie announced confidently. He acknowledged that investors were frustrated by excessive red tape, and that something needed to be done.
We were pleased to see that Christie took The Guardian’s advice in Monday’s editorial to send a clear message to potential investors that over-regulation was a thing of the past, and that private enterprise was not in jeopardy.
According to the Prime Minister there are “hundreds of millions of investment dollars” represented by pending applications before the Bahamas Investment Authority and the National Economic Council.
But with investments being tangled up in a bureaucratic framework, there is a danger that investors may grow weary because of the delays and look elsewhere.
“Simply put,” Mr Christie told the forum, “the wheels of the government are still moving too slowly and inefficiently in this regard. We can ill afford to frustrate potential investors, particularly at a time like this.”
All of this is tied to the question of productivity on the job, a stable currency, sensible labour laws, and a reduction in an alarming rate of violent crime that continues to plague our country. We cannot simply wave a magic wand and create a utopia overnight.
There is no question that the package of labour laws passed under the previous government is in need of urgent review. It would seem that political considerations dominated the former government’s thinking at the time that those laws were passed, without due consideration of their impact on the economy.
A decent minimum wage and reduced working hours are noble objectives, but these all are directly dependent on the health and vibrancy of the economy. It is no use insisting on the payment of a minimum wage if employers are barely breaking even. They will either cut staff, or go belly-up. No one wins.
It is unchristian for workers to twiddle their thumbs on the job all day and expect to get paid a salary, much less a government-mandated minimum wage at the end of the day.
It is not fair for the legislature to sanction the poor conduct of workers who goof off and those who steal and go undetected. Employers must be allowed some degree of freedom to respond to changing circumstances, and not be chained by misconceived legislation.
Editorial, The Nassau Guardian
