By EARYEL BOWLEG

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

FINANCE Minister Peter Turnquest suggested that the economic loss from the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be as great or greater than Hurricane Dorian’s impact.

While a guest on a ZNS broadcast yesterday, the minister was asked whether the Category 5 storm or the pandemic has presented the greatest challenge. Perplexed by the question, he replied it was difficult to choose between the two as they have “brought tremendous hardship” to Bahamians.

“The hurricanes came and destroyed people’s lives as well as property and the process of re-building from basically scratch in a place like Abaco has been painstakingly slow and costly and difficult. The cost of that was over $3.4 billion in economic loss. This pandemic is like a hurricane that hits the entire Bahamas without knocking down one building. The economic loss from this is likely to be as big and probably much higher than that.

“And so again both present some very significant challenges for us and really from my view I can’t really pick which one is worse because in as much as those persons in Abaco have lost their homes in addition to suffering the economic loss those persons in the rest of the islands, Nassau, Grand Bahama, and the rest are suffering the kind of effects that you would experience after a hurricane minus not having your home destroyed.”

According to the minister, an increased allocation of $4 million was extended to the Department of Social Services to help at-risk people during the COVID-19 economic fallout. However, Mr Turnquest noted there are some people who have ran out of these benefits as there is a limit the department can give. As these individuals are of concern, he revealed they are trying to design something but hope the end of the crisis is soon rather than later.