By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

A FORMER Cabinet minister yesterday backed the Davis administration’s efforts to secure outside investor capital and expertise for Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) via a public- private partnership (PPP) model.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, now back as Superwash’s principal, and an ex-minister of tourism and aviation, said the state-owned energy monopoly would “absolutely” benefit from private sector management given that it is already burdened by $500m in debt and other liabilities and needs fresh investment of the same magnitude - taking its total needs to $1bn.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Mr D’Aguilar said the Government does not have sufficient financing itself to make the necessary

transformation. He added that several PPP projects, such as the Nassau Cruise Port and Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD), have been successful and governments should continue to follow this approach.

“You need private investment in these companies to provide them with sufficient capital in order for them to reinvent themselves. This age-old model of trying to use taxpayer money to fix the power company, fix the water company, fix the airports, fix the ports, there’s just not sufficient money in the Treasury to do that,” Mr D’Aguilar said.

“So you’ve got to be creative and innovative, and bring people in who can bring capital, bring people in who can operate them, and the Bahamian people will be the beneficiary of this. Look at the projects that we’ve done. We’ve done Nassau Cruise Port successfully, we’ve done the commercial port, Arawak ports, that works very well. We’ve done the dump that works very well.

“We did Lynden Pindling International Airport; that’s going very well. So when we do these projects, we’re very proud of them. They all look wonderful, they operate beautifully. And so that’s why I think we’ve got to continue with this model. Obviously, tweaking the model in order to allow Bahamians to invest and to get a return from investing in these projects.”

Mr D’Aguilar also supports PPPs for the renovation of Family Island airports, which have fallen into a “dilapidated state” due to a lack of maintenance. He said the Nassau Cruise Port was largely successful due to the $330m in investment not funded by “taxpayer money”.

“So the Government owns and operates 30 airports, and if you look in the Budget, the funding is never sufficient to look after those airports. So over time, they fall into a dilapidated state. The only way we can fix this problem is to do public-private partnerships, where you add private sector money to the airports, and bring in operators and you get it renovated, upgraded, it’s just going to take so much money,” Mr D’Aguilar said.

“[The Nassau Cruise Port] cost $330m to renovate and to upgrade. Not $1 of taxpayer money was used to do that, and that is why it’s so successful. The Government of The Bahamas just does not have sufficient funding to upgrade all of its airports and ports, so it has to merge itself, bring the asset, the private sector money to make this beautiful project.”

Mr D’Aguilar argued that airports are “critical” for Family Islands, and there is a need for more avenues to funnel private sector funds into public infrastructure projects.

He said: “Airports are absolutely critical. Of course, you’ve got Exuma, which I believe is under renovation. You got Bimini, they’ve started to do some work. Then you’ve got North Eleuthera, which is hugely busy and nothing’s happening there. But, as I say, these things take tens of millions of dollars to fix and the Government of the Bahamas simply does not have the funding to do all of these airports.

“That’s why it’s got to merge. You know, there’s $8bn Bahamian dollars sitting in the bank getting zero percent interest so you’ve got to figure out how to get that money invested in our infrastructure projects to bring a return to the Bahamian people.”