By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A former Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce president yesterday estimated that the island’s post-COVID jobless rate is “hovering” around 35 percent given the absence of official data.

Kevin Seymour, who moderated two panel discussions at the Grand Bahama Business Outlook conference, suggested that more than one in three Grand Bahamians seeking work is unable to find it after his attempts to obtain figures from the National Statistical Institute (former Department of Statistics) failed to yield results.

“If I had to conservatively guess, I would imagine the unemployment rate hovers around 35 percent; somewhere in that area,” he said during both debates, one of which involved fellow former Chamber heads, and the other representatives of key industrial players on Grand Bahama.

Meanwhile, David Skentelbery, the Grand Bahama Shipyard’s chief executive, voiced concerns that the influx of ship’s crew and technicians when the business gets back to full operational capacity could place further strain on the island’s already stressed fresh water system.

Identifying challenges with the island’s supporting infrastructure, especially Grand Bahama International Airport and hospital facilities, he said: “Because of the hurricanes, we have difficulties with the airport. It’s the way to get customers and technicians in and out in a timely manner. While that has improved a little, we’ve got a long way to go.”

While the Grand Bahama Shipyard is operating at reduced capacity due to the loss of two docks in 2019, via a combination of accident and Hurricane Dorian, Mr Skentelbery warned the “airport at the moment is a barrier” with the need for “airlift capacity” set to potentially ramp up significantly once its cruise ship business returns in earnest.

He also voiced concern about the capacity of Grand Bahama’s hospital facilities, adding: “God forbid there should be a major incident.” While the imminent arrival of Doctors Hospital’s “flagship” facility at the First Commercial Centre may help ease these fears, and the Government this year plans to break ground on a replacement for the Rand, the Shipyard chief said the state of the island’s medical assets was “worrying and concerning”.

And, once Grand Bahama Shipyard’s two new docks arrive, and it is restored to 100 percent operational capacity, Mr Skentelbery said the influx of crew and contractors could place unbearable strain on Grand Bahama’s potable water infrastructure. He added that a new vessel’s arrival, and crew change, could swell Grand Bahama’s population temporarily by 8,000 - a number equivalent to possibly 20 percent of its 40,000-50,000 strong population.

“We are planning on getting new docks. These will be among the biggest in the world, and will take the largest cruise ships in the world,” he explained. “One of the big issues we are seeing...is fresh water. That’s a considerable burden on the island’s potable water system, so that’s a big challenge in the future.”

Mr Skentelbery said the Grand Bahama Shipyard had managed the COVID-19 pandemic such that only three employees were off work with the virus at any one time despite the nature of the business involving “people working on top of each other”.

However, he also warned that the dry dock investment was “not signed in stone yet”. Both the Davis and Minnis administrations have already touted this $350m expansion of the Shipyard, while Tribune Business reported that up to $80m of the required capital could be raised in the Bahamian capital markets, with the proceeds used to prepare the site to receive the docks that are being constructed in Asia and will arrive in the 2022 second half.

Giora Israel, Carnival Corporation’s senior vice-president for port and destination development, last year told this newspaper that Grand Bahama Shipyard will become “the biggest industrial concern in the Caribbean by far” if it proceeds with the investment to build the world’s largest floating dock. He added that the Shipyard and its owners were currently exploring the “options and opportunities” to build such a dock in China to replace the one that was lost in April 2019’s accident.

Acknowledging that the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating fall-out has impacted the ability of the Shipyard’s cruise line shareholders to fund this investment directly, he added that some financing may be raised in The Bahamas to help cover the costs of associated land-based infrastructure work that would accompany the new dock.

Mr Israel, who sits on the Shipyard’s Board representing Carnival as a 40 percent shareholder, with the remaining ownership split 40/20 between Royal Caribbean and the Grand Bahama Port Authority’s Port Group Ltd, said investing in a larger dock was under consideration prior to the April 2019 accident involving the Oasis of the Seas cruise liner.

He added that shareholders had been anticipating “building a larger dock” in response to the increasing size of cruise ships that would have been “the biggest floating dock in the Americas”. Subsequent inquiries confirmed that such a dock has to be built in Asia rather than Europe, but the cruise industry’s enforced COVID-19 closure and billions of dollars in losses has disrupted financing plans.

“We are looking at our options and opportunities to build such a dock in China,” Mr Israel said at the time. “The COVID-19 situation put a strain on the ability of the shareholders to directly fund it. We’re looking at various options and opportunities as to how to build it and fund it. We’re looking at this process.

“We have to talk to the Government in due course as we get more advanced in this process. It [the dock] will definitely be the biggest in the world; by far the biggest in the world. We have a lot of engineers working on it. We have to bring it over from China.”