The Ba­hamas gov­ern­ment has wel­comed the lat­est re­port from the US-based glob­al cred­it rat­ings agency, Stan­dard & Poors (S&P), that ac­knowl­edged the coun­try’s “ro­bust” re­cov­ery and the re­duc­tion in the fis­cal deficit.

S&P, in its analy­sis pro­ject­ed that Ba­hami­an eco­nom­ic out­put, or gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP), will grow by 1.8 per cent in 2024, slight­ly low­er than the 2.3 per cent pro­ject­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) in its most re­cent Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion and the Ba­hami­an Cen­tral Bank, which is pre­dict­ing sim­i­lar growth of above two per cent.

The US-based rat­ing agency main­tained The Ba­hamas’ present ‘B+’ long-term cred­it rat­ing to­geth­er with a “sta­ble” out­look. It al­so gave cred­it for a “ro­bust re­cov­ery” post-COVID and the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion ef­forts, which have slashed the deficit and con­tained debt.

But Shad­ow fi­nance min­is­ter J Kwasi Thomp­son said the op­po­si­tion is “very con­cerned” about the re­port, not­ing that S&P said it ex­pects the Ba­hami­an econ­o­my to slow to 1.8 per cent in 2024, high­light­ing the coun­try’s “be­low-av­er­age long-term growth per­for­mance com­pared with that of oth­ers at a sim­i­lar lev­el of de­vel­op­ment”.

Thomp­son said the agency pre­sent­ed a “some­what bleak sto­ry of the eco­nom­ic tra­jec­to­ry of The Ba­hamas”.

How­ev­er, in a state­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Philip Davis said the with con­tain­ment of the debt bur­den, and the gov­ern­ment’s new en­er­gy re­forms, sup­port­ed S&P’s de­ci­sion “to af­firm our coun­try’s cred­it rat­ings and to des­ig­nate the out­look as sta­ble.

“The re­port comes three years in­to our term, at a time when we’re ho­n­our­ing the Ba­hami­an peo­ple for how far we’ve come to­geth­er, while recog­nis­ing there is much work yet to be done. When we en­tered of­fice, the coun­try was in cri­sis.

“The mis­han­dling of the pan­dem­ic meant our coun­try’s health and eco­nom­ic out­comes lagged be­hind those of oth­er na­tions in the re­gion. Our na­tion­al debt had in­creased by US$2.4 bil­lion in just two years,” he added.

Davis said that every­one un­der­stood how grim and se­ri­ous the sit­u­a­tion was and Ba­hami­ans feared a ma­jor in­crease in val­ue added tax (VAT) and even a cur­ren­cy de­val­u­a­tion. He said Ba­hami­an busi­ness­es were suf­fer­ing from mis­guid­ed lock­downs and cur­fews and hos­pi­tals were in dire straits and schools were closed and in dis­re­pair.

But he said his ad­min­is­tra­tion has been able to turn around the sit­u­a­tion and that there’s still a lot more work ahead.

“A glob­al in­fla­tion cri­sis has hit our Ba­hami­an fam­i­lies hard. There aren’t any easy an­swers or quick fix­es, so we’re tak­ing on our coun­try’s tough­est prob­lems,” Prime Min­is­ter Davis said, adding that “we’re im­ple­ment­ing our coun­try’s first na­tion­wide en­er­gy re­forms, up­grad­ing our elec­tric­i­ty grid and bring­ing so­lar pow­er and nat­ur­al gas to our is­lands”.

Davis said that the gov­ern­ment un­der­stands that com­pre­hen­sive, na­tion­wide re­form of this sec­tor is the on­ly way to re­duce prices and make elec­tric­i­ty more re­li­able, “both es­sen­tial to help­ing Ba­hami­an fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es and to sup­port­ing the dy­nam­ic, in­clu­sive eco­nom­ic growth we know our coun­try is ca­pa­ble of”.

He said that the coun­try is build­ing and strength­en­ing part­ner­ships across the world , strength­en­ing bor­ders as well as ad­vo­cat­ing for poli­cies that help small is­land states like The Ba­hamas to pro­mote op­por­tu­ni­ties for Ba­hami­ans.

(CMC)