By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC) is pushing for more reciprocal trade arrangements, its chief executive describing this as a “big part” of the agenda going forward.

“We are trying to get organised for a trip to Cuba at end of the month, the Havana International Fair and Expo,” said Edison Sumner. “We are working on that with Bahamasair to see if we can get as many local business persons as we can get to attend. That is something that we are pushing very aggressively.

“We also have a trade mission scheduled for Washington in November. Haiti is still on our radar. We will probably seek to get in there in the first part of next year. There is a lot of interest from Canadian businesses on many levels, and so we want to take a delegation to Canada and let them know about business opportunities here. What we are really pushing for with these missions is to bring about reciprocal arrangements. Trade missions will be a big part of our agenda in 2018.”

Mr Sumner added that the Chamber had decided to “reconfigure” its approach in terms of delivering assistance to businesses, particularly on the Family Islands, which were impacted by Hurricane Irma.

“We realised that there were some other things in the pipelines as far as relief being made,” he said. “We are supporting some of those initiatives. We are going to reconfigure our approach and, in this instance, provide more technical support rather than financial assistance. We have decided to act in an advisory capacity rather than offer funding, and that gives us the opportunity to look at how to approach these things in the future,” said Mr Sumner.