Do you remember that old newspaper game, Connect-the-Dots?  The page would be filled with little dots, each numbered, and if you connected the dots in numbered sequence you would find that you would have drawn a picture of something like an animal, a bird or a piece of furniture. Many of us enjoyed the fun of discovering the final image. In this article, we will attempt to connect some dots, but with no mystery about the final image. The final picture, the connected dots, is intended to show something about the Bahamian economy. Keep in mind that I am not, and not pretending to be an economist, just a citizen trying to understand the economic strategies with which we are building the nation. So here we go.

The first dot is an observation. On most days, anyone driving along Marlborough Street, in front of British Colonial Hotel would see a line of tourists either on their way to or from Junkanoo Beach. As it happens, Nassau is among the few cruise destinations in the world where it is possible to walk from the ship to the beach (except on private islands). While we are accustomed to seeing that traffic, most of us are unaware of its meaning as business. While the numbers might not be recorded, it is clear that on a daily basis, hundreds or thousands of potential customers head towards Junkanoo Beach to enjoy the beautiful white sand and crystal sea, and to enjoy laying under the Bahamian sun.

The second dot is the meaning of the word “tourist attraction”. An attraction is a place-specific experience which is made available as a business transaction. The three conditions required for an attraction to succeed are that it must be time and place specific, it must be customer-oriented and it must have a profit potential. Access to it may be free or paid. For example, swimming in the sea is free, but renting a towel to dry your body is an opportunity for commerce. Entrance to a museum or show might require payment. Junkanoo Beach presently has a few business operations, making it an attraction for visitors. Hanse it can be called a tourist attraction. The daily crowds headed there certainly think so.

Dot Number three is a Request for Proposals issued by the Ministry of Tourism in 2018 for the development and management of Junkanoo Beach. Of the several proposals received, a few were selected for final presentation to the Ministry. Those selected would have all converted the present anemic attraction into a world-class beach experience, with a new boardwalk, waterfront restaurants, craft markets, public facilities and proper organization of the beach to better serve both the visitors and vendors. The most important feature of the proposals was that the developers would have been local.

Dot number four takes us back many years to the launch of a policy called “Anchor Projects”. The policy, with which most people agreed at the time, was based upon the idea that large, foreign-owned resorts offered lots of jobs. The new policy was declared with the promise to locate an “Anchor Project” on every island, thereby guarantying high levels of employment. Whether using the term or not, this idea has been the policy of every government for the past 50 years or so. But while large resorts do in fact offer lots of employment, and are therefore beneficial to the stability of the economy, they do not contribute to the growth of the local economy, as the profits from those businesses are repatriated. However, the effort to attract these large projects has required the commitment of the resources with which governments might have developed the destination’s own tourism business. Instead, we have committed public land, tax revenue and access to government not offered locally, then paid annually for resorts to advertise for THEIR customers, while virtually abandoning our own tourism business, resulting in a destination judged the worst in the Caribbean for cruising. The destination has almost no customers of its own, very little product to sell, and therefore very little local profits.

The next dot is a speech by the Minister of Economic Affairs, in which he noted that there was a need for the Bahamas to accelerate the growth of its GDP if it wishes to have a healthy economy, and that his strategy for accomplishing this would be by a stronger focus on foreign direct investment. My understanding of the term Gross Domestic Product is that it is the sum total of domestic business activity. That would mean that the growth in the GDP requires an increase in LOCAL business, which usually requires the reinvestment of LOCAL profits. By definition, foreign investors take their profits back to wherever “foreign” is, which does not grow the local business platform. It therefore makes a difference whether the businesses our country invests in are owned by a foreign investor or by a Bahamian entity.

The final dot is the sudden and unexplained cancellation of the Ministry of Tourism’s RFP for Junkanoo Beach after months of review, followed less than eighteen months later by the approval of a lease for a similar beach experience on Paradise Island, to be owned by a cruise line, both by the same government. The Government of the Bahamas appears to have decided that it was better to have a foreign developer offer a beach attraction than a local entity (either at Junkanoo Beach or on Paradise Island where another local developer was reportedly being supplanted) providing the same experience. What makes that decision so strange is that the evidence of traffic to the local attraction (the proof of concept, so to speak) already existed, and continues to exist. In fact, as stated in another forum, inviting the cruise line to open its own a business in our front door is contrary to any principle guiding our relationship. The relationship between the Bahamas and any cruise ship is that they are invited to cruise our waters and offer their passengers access to our sun, sand and sea and cultural experiences in exchange for them delivering customers for our tourism businesses. Ownership of businesses in our country is not part of that relationship. Local developers would be able to provide those experiences if treated to the support their offshore friends are accustomed to.

Now we can step back and see what we have drawn. It is a picture of a very sluggish and underfed economy. It shows healthy foreign investors being well taken care of by successive governments while local businesses struggle for both attention and resources. Wow! Boy, we could draw good.