By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Government has set aside $20 million from this year’s budget to market the $3.5 billion Baha Mar development as part of its agreement, Prime Minister Perry Christie said yesterday, raising the issue to highlight the financial challenges The Government faces in relation to providing subsidies and concessions for the Bahamian tourism sector.

During his keynote address at the launch of the Caribbean Growth Forum Mr Christie said that with regards to the tourism sector the government would have to look at how it managed subsidies/incentives and had contracted a firm to do an analysis of how much the government was subsidising the industry in comparison to other countries.

“What we have decided now is in examining the tourism industry in The Bahamas the question of subsidies, incentives becomes a key question and how we go about managing that. We are going to have to put over $20 million in this budget cycle to create awareness in the marketplace for Baha Mar. We’re going to have to find the money even if we have to borrow it because that’s the agreement,” said Mr Christie.

Mr Christie said: “We have had the great challenge of meeting the cost for our share of the road, besides the arguments where we differ with what they are charging us. We are talking to our own engineers and so forth. We agreed to pay, we haven’t paid it all yet on the road ways because they said they would build this beautiful highway if we paid 50 per cent of it. There is a carrying cost for this tourism product.”

Mr Christie said that the government had contracted KPMG to examine what the government pays to sustain the tourism sector in comparison to other countries.

“I have always been sort of driven by the need to determine why it is that when we brag about our tourism industry we have to pay so much to keep it going,” Mr Christie said.

Further emphasising the point Mr Christie said that the government had been paying an extraordinary amount of money to sustain the Grand Bahama tourism sector.

“I was made weak to look at what they were paying to keep Grand Bahama and Freeport alive, an extraordinary amount of money. I think with what we are doing now we are cutting it down. We have probably taken $10 million off the table in terms of what we are paying,” Mr Christie said.