By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamian Contractors Association’s (BCA) president yesterday said the industry does not need the Government’s help to source materials outside the US, adding: “We’ve been doing this for 30-40 years.”

Leonard Sands, speaking after the Bahamas Trade Commission said it was aiming to make construction costs more affordable by acquiring supplies from other Caribbean jurisdictions, told Tribune Business that the Government did not seem to realise the private sector has already been doing this for decades.

Instead, he argued that the Government should exploit its purchasing power and seek to acquire materials itself for use in its own housing programme if it was really serious about reducing construction and home ownership costs for Bahamians. These supplies could then be passed to the contractors hired to build government housing subdivisions.

“Who’s asked for that in the private sector? Anyone?” Mr Sands told this newspaper of the Trade Commission’s building materials initiative. “They asked me about that, and engaged the BCA about that, and we told them very frankly that every contractor sources supplies from every timezone in the market already from whoever they want it from. They don’t need the Government’s assistance in that regard.

“I’m not going to go to the Government and say I need 15 pallets of plywood, here’s my money, can you go out and source it from Curacao or Venezuela for me. We can do that ourselves. It’s a matter of getting on the phone with a supplier and paying for it. There’s no advantage.

“What the Government should do is, if it’s really interested in driving down the cost of housing for government subdivisions and government housing projects, they should source the materials and give it to the contractor to use. The private sector does not need the Government’s assistance to source product for the construction industry. We do that on a daily basis from around the world.”

Disclosing that he has sourced tiles from Jerusalem in the Middle East, as well as materials from nations such as Vietnam and Germany, Mr Sands said there is “no barrier” to Bahamian contractors diversifying their supply chains. He added that the US is the main source of The Bahamas’ construction supplies because of its proximity and “convenience”, which means product arrives quicker and shipping costs are lower.

“It may cost a bit more than getting something from Venezuela,” the BCA chief said, “but we know it’s faster. If we go on the phone and a supplier in Miami or Georgia has 50 pallets of plywood, we will have it in Nassau within a week. I call up a supplier in Venezuela, it will take three to four weeks. It’s convenience. It’s not that we’re ignoring the cost.

“Contractors buy direct from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic now. What are you [the Government] helping us with? We do this now. What is so funny is that I spoke to Mr Griffin [the Trade Commission’s chairman]. He’s a nice young man, but they are just catching up with what the construction industry has been doing for 30-40 years.

“Contractors have been buying material from the Dominican Republic since the 1980s. I have contractors in my membership who go to the Dominican Republic four times’ a year and load up with supplies, stock up with supplies,” Mr Sands said.

“The Government is so insulated from the private sector that they think when they do something new it’s the next best thing. Entrepreneurs in the private sector found opportunities way before them. We’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s just now that this Trade Commission has discovered places like Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

“It’s foolishness. They are talking about something we have already looked at, and the fact we don’t talk about it is because the practical application is where the client has a difficulty. I can get a door from Indonesia at one-tenth of the cost of a door in Florida, but the door takes six months to get here. A client is not going to wait six months for a door to get here. You buy the door that’s most convenient.

“These are the realities in the private sector that technocrats do not appreciate because they do not build homes for people,” Mr Sands added. “But I do think there’s value in the Government going to these places, structuring relationships and buying these materials in bulk and building 100 homes as cheap as they can and going for it.

“That’s what should be done. They would then only need to hire a contractor and labour. Buy all the material and contract the labour. Have they even thought about that? I’ve not heard anyone say it. I’ve not heard anyone say that. Then they could pass a significant amount of savings on to the home owner.”

Mr Griffin last week pledged that consumers can expect to see a 20-60 percent reduction in the cost of frequently-consumed food items by this summer.

Speaking at the Office of the Prime Minister’s weekly media briefing, he said Super Value’s much-touted egg price reduction is “only the beginning” and several other products will be sourced directly from suppliers in the Caribbean and Latin America.

He added that the National Trade Diversification Programme is working to connect Bahamian businesses with international suppliers of grocery items such as canned goods, meats and produce to reduce the cost of imports.

“Our goal is simply to slash the price of as many goods as possible over the short-term, and so what has happened with eggs is only the beginning. We are here to announce that we expect a 20 percent to 60 percent decrease of a new round of products over the short-term,” said Mr Griffin.

“Everything from chicken and poultry, pork, beef, kidney beans, lima beans, limes; a whole slew of canned goods, such as tuna, sardines, corned beef, rice, all things that we are currently getting from various suppliers, mostly in the United States. But when we go directly to the sources in Latin America and the Caribbean, we’re able to bring these goods at a much cheaper rate.”

Mr Griffin said the private sector is a key partner in the initiative, and participants only have to ensure they pass their savings on to the consumer. “The only thing we ask of our partners in this initiative is to make sure that those cost savings are passed on to Bahamians,” he added.

“Just as you’ve seen with the eggs, where eggs in some places went from $15 and $16 to $3 and $4, our plan is to work very closely with industry to make this happen. This programme is a government-supported and government-facilitated programme, but the private sector is really the driver of this. We’re working with our private sector partners to make this happen.”

Mr Griffin said consumers can expect to see price reductions by summer following a trade mission to Panama and Ecuador in April, which will allow Bahamian retailers and wholesalers to visit and inspect factories and goods before placing orders.