Incredulous. When will the blaming stop and the FNM get to work and address the many issues facing the Bahamas.

It is sickening to constantly hear the previous government did this or that. Just do the job you were elected to do since you guys are soooooo smart with the answers for all.

Frankly, the electorate largely thinks the FNM has no plan other than to blame. Not good governance.

Stop being cry babies and get to work.

Should Quickbooks be used, it would have to be adapted to an international standard of day month year in the dating system and not the odd month day year as only used in the USA and which is unacceptable here - or anywhere else but the USA..

QuickBooks is not suitable for the vast transactions of a Sovereign Government. It's capabilities are designed for mostly small and medium sized businesses. Most companies that grow from medium to large actually have to transition out of QuickBooks due to greater issues/problems occurring as the transactions grow in size. If anyone in MOF suggested switching to QuickBooks for our nation's financial transactions...I would question their fitness for office.

I would not recommend Quickbooks either but it could be adapted for almost any enterprise including government. Remember there are companies that have larger GDP's than the Bahamas.

Everyone knows the appalling state of the government's accounting and other record keeping systems and there are many in the private-sector who have perfected the art of gaming (swindling) the out-of-control system by submitting padded, adjusted or duplicate billings of every kind imaginable. The fraud here runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Accordingly, K P Turnquest and the Public Treasury should not be settling any bill submitted to government without first verifying that the goods or services were in fact received on the basis of a valid purchase/procurement order or contract and at the agreed/contracted price. And to put a stop to all of his silly guessing work about the true deficit, K P Turnquest should simply issue a formal public announcement that the government will not honour bills and other claims submitted to it in respect of goods and services received prior to 30 June 2017 if those bills and claims are not submitted to a stipulated official in the Ministry of Finance by a certain date with appropriate supporting documentation. K P Turquest needs to stop squawking about all of his overwhelming problems and get on with fixing them in a sensible manner. Otherwise he should step aside so that someone with the necessary leadership and management skills can be appointed to identify and implement the appropriate systems, controls and procedures to prevent the many fraudulent schemes that continue to take a frightening toll on the government's limited financial resources.

It is common knowledge that many suppliers and service providers to government ministries, agencies, departments and corporations deliberately submit duplicate and triplicate billings in the course of a month. They do this because they know that quite often the same bill gets paid more than once, with no claim ever being made for a refund of the duplicate or triplicate payment(s) received.

The bulk of the National Debt is moneys owed to ourselves. The Government burrows from NIB. NIB lends money that suppose to finance old age retirement pension. The money meets current obligation at the expense of future needs. The system is build on straws.

Let's not forget that a huge and fast growing portion of our National Debt is now denominated in hard currencies and owed to foreign financial institutions. The National Insurance Fund was bled dry years ago and is now basically a ponzi scheme, i.e. those under age 50 paying in today should expect nothing coming back to them when they retire.

Comrades! I've been told that as high as 25% per cent of the total US Dollars that comes through the banks doors is not being made available to the banks consumer and business customers to transact any business with those US Dollar funds?
There will come a time when the international credit monitoring agencies will rebuff further excuses.

The News will soon come that you will need to have contributed to NIB for 100 years to be able to draw a pension from NIB. Of coures it will be retroactive to 1967 like our great PAPA did in 2011.

Comrades! The finance minister needs new Hat!
You could've thought it was all made up - how the DPM/Minister Finance, actually said/meant to say, "My Dear Comrades, the nation's bills were still slowly coming into my office as the new red government's minister of finance tooks over reigns governing - so to give the people a 'snap shot,' I just decided to 'pull dollar figures outta da Hat'.... cause I didn't really knows all the amounts of the hefty old PLP incurred bills which the new red shirts administration would be faced with paying off." Please forgive your MOF, for doing da old project the nation's expenses - by not putting all the PLP's old bills - into Hat.... after all, I is only miscalculated by hundreds millions the public purse's dollars?

Does anyone know who $60m for medical insurance premiums are for?

I smell another downgrade to junk+++.

The answer is easy -- stop the fooking spending, and chase down the thieves and get our money back.

Take off the helicopter helmets, and get to real work, instead of playing victim.

Make the hard decisions. Start downsizing the civil service. Cut to the bare bone. Do the hard things -- the things that you were elected to do. Otherwise you are fiddling while Rome burns.

We wanna see action, not talk and more spending.

ABSOLUTELY!

The FNM Government is responsible for some of the deficit, it is not as if they are without
sin. When the FNM became the government in 2007 their Papa said the PLP had left
the treasury in a good position. Their Papa spent money like a drunken Sailor. they left
a 100 million dollars over run on the road works alone. They sold BTC for peanuts
that helped them, they also benefit from south riding point sale. They should speak
Truth and stop telling the Bahamian People lies. Because they can rest assured their
lies will not stand Masterful liars that they are.

Was the previous Queens loyal opposition not in parliament when all this was going on?

Bank of the Bahamas did get quick financoal attention and the Bank of the Bahamas which was suing the govt Central Bank of the Bahamas. Investigations should happen and persons if found guilty should be jailed. Two agencies cannot be right att the same time suing and the govt financialy steps in with the peoples money and in this case no public investigations and who is paying the legal fees.

Now that sums of the peoples money are being sought and the majority of the other sode not in power are gone one surely could not blame only those parliamentarians. Again investigations must happen and persons public servants if found guilty must be jailed.

It is stupid to blame a few dpzen MP no longer there and the civil servants who are there always carry no blame.

The same thing happens after each election for how many alternating govts over 20 to 25 years and if the new ones cannot pick up and jail those civil servants obstructing etc then what.

Somewhere somehow there should be some agency to step in and balance what any small opposition size cannot do. Like ombudsman, independent Bank Supervision and Auditing agency, stiffer penalties for white collar crime etc.

Loretta was a lightweight -- only in the brains department though. As opposition leader, she was a failure. How could a corpse stuffer know civics, and politics. She had no tertiary education in public affairs. The only letters after her name, was KFC.

Yes, Comrade Bogart, Minnis,,'KP' and his "Rebel red shirts MP's. were very much in the House this past December 7. 2016, but rather than debate the PLP government's money bill, Minnis got ousted as official opposition leader. In fact, after December 2016 until the May 10, 2017 General Election bell got's run.... Minnis lost all interest in attending the House as a MP and the records will show that MP Minnis was a 'no show" in the House. Yep, 'KP' was right there in the House on December 7. 2016 - but refused debate monies matters with the PLP government? ( Believe me, you don't have make this Minnis and 'KP' stuff up }

http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2017…

http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2017…

The FNM needs to have a plan to deal with the deficit. They should have upon assuming office

1. Required all permanent secretaries and department heads submit plans to reduce expenditure by 20% across the board.
2. The National Training Agency should be discontinued.
3. Urban Renewal should be discontinued.
4. Junkanoo Carnival should be discontinued.
5. Subsidies to all government corporation should have been reduced by 25%.
6. All outstanding monies owed to the government ,and it's corporations should be collected.
7. Reduction in staff of the civil service by computerization of processes.
8. No more issuing of padded contracts.
9. Strict adherence to proper purchasing and procurement processes.
However I will venture to say the FNM won't do these things.They will just continue to talk

.

$1 million paid to a famous golfer? If they have to have a famous athlete show up to an event, couldn't they reach out to some of the Bahamian Olympics athletes?

Bonefish you are too kind. How about:

Close or giveaway Bahamasair,
Close or giveaway Bank of The Bahamas,
Reduce the Public service by 1/3

Actually reduce by half or 50% is a reachable number if they leveraged technology and computerisation across the board.

Bonefish & Deddie are on the right track ....... except that too much Government contraction will absolutely lead to an economic collapse in this present fragile situation ...... But should Perry and Halkitis not be held responsible for this fiscal fiasco?????? ........ There has been not a whisper from those two who controlled the Ministry of Finance for 5 years ....... Watsayu???
Who has the ability to invest in this economy right now?????? ....... Eastern Road Knights, the Sunshine Boys and the Numbers Cartel?????? .......... That is a dangerous oligarchy to sell the national assets to without a surefire guarantee of further investment and economic diversification ........ But we have seen what the foreigners have done ..... Cable & Wireless, GBPA, PowerSecure, Bahamar/CTFE & Renew have hoodwinked us to the maximum and held us out to dry.

First 100 Days come and gone ... and NOTHiNG, following largest political gain in Bahamian History. High time to stop "blaming" and start "producing" and as for the Witchhunt, nothing of any major significance has been revealed and that what has will probably go no where.

Save your numbers if you guys aren't ADDING, LISTING, or making GRAPHICS of anything. Just shut up. Ineffective transparency.

100% agree with Bonefish, but Dream on.

And I only say that because of the signals they've been sending us from day 2. The only way to turn this around is for FNM supporters en masse to tell them stop the foolishness.

The NTA for example is going full steam duplicating courses offered at BTVI, Bahama Host and COB. They simply replaced Marcel, who did an excellent job with the setup btw, took all her hard work to hand an unsuccessful candidate an easy salary. That part is the most disgraceful. It's these small things that tell you exactly where their head is. Appointing Macalpine as chair of the Hotel Corp, Adrian Gibson as chair of WSC. Romi as environment minister. lampshades at Social Services, either Miller who once expressed astonished that anyone could put a pamphlet together. 10 MPs appointed to government boards.

They are not going to rock the Apple cart. They want to get paid, distract the public with scandals and get reflected.

The next four years will be filled with National Inquirer type reveal after reveal. They will successfully divert the national attention by presenting the ?Bahamian public with salacious scandals. Do you know why we suddenly heard about a "travel inquiry". Everyone was scratching their heads wondering, where did that come from? Travel??? Well two days prior the scandal broke in the US over three cabinet secretaries piling up million dollar tabs chartering private airplanes. Some FNM politic hack looked at that and said "travel"! That'll stir up the Bahamian public too! Let's use it. And off we go, a Nonsensical travel investigation that will put more money into some accounting firm as agreed, and accomplish nothing.

FNM supporters its time to stop "asking/waiting" for them to present a plan, rather present a plan and "demand" that it be done.

"Lampshades at social services" ROTFL. I must spend more time editing lol

Listening to the Steve McKinney Show on PEACE FM............... This is a really serious thing when even the financial pundits are struggling to understand how BIG the real deficit may be for the 2016-17 fiscal year.
Athama Bowe should be hung, drawn and quartered as a PLP goon.

That's not the biggest problem, the biggest problem is that KP borrowed 700 million... almost 1 billion dollars! without understanding the problem. He admitted it...read above. I wish I had those two what's app big eyes for emphasis.

Our biggest problem is that Dr Minnis is appointing unqualified/unsuitable people to some very key positions. All because they are people he thinks "he can work with". We don't have time for dat. We need the best people in the critical positions. And no I dont have names, but I'm sure if you put a proper vetting process in place, one who's sole purpose is to find the best people, we'll find them.

**People is our número uno problem**

Sooooo, who could have been the best Cabinet Ministers based on performance and not HAMloyalty ...... MOFinance for starters??????

I did say "*no, I don't have names, use a proper vetting process*". I could name two people who wouldn't have passed the first stage of vetting for top level financial officers. Anyways I ALWAYS liked Dr Sands ever since I saw him on gaming referendum night, thought he was thoughtful, methodical, intelligent, good grasp of the issues and to the point. He hasn't disappointed me so far....next?....uh the wheel of fortune theme is playing now....or is that jeopardy...