"Anti money laundering and terror financing controls in place".

This is how it starts, under the guise of "good sounding regulation" the existing money criminals have the government protect their market.

As if a Bahamian sending 50 bucks has anything to do with terror financing.

Wanna learn bout terror financing, as the US government how it's done, they do the lions share of it.

All this is, well it's rules to protect the big boy's market.

Notice yet another example of what a lousy country and people we are.

John says seems u r in denial.

Try and take an objective look, then tell me what you see. This is not the country it could have been.

I see in the news that the Canadian Gov is discussing blocking Bahamians from immigrating /visiting for education to Canada as a response to our actions.

Guess the world really is watching.

Well not actually the government, but some members of parliament and public suggesting blocking Bahamian immigration to Canada., But either way it's the same thing.

Once again we have proven to the world what we are as a people and a country.

We deserve our reputation, it's well earned.

this is a bogus argument, it's simple put signs up that say vat is included, then there is no doubt.

The pie is only so big, employing vat gave the government a big new slice of the pie, obviously that slice came out of everyone else's share. It's really not that difficult to figure out. Sales had to decline with the implementation of vat.

i understand the constitutional argument, though it's hard to expect the government will ever follow the constitution when they are too busy filling their own pockets with all their corrupt practices.
Seems we'd be fools. to think that our governing thieves (both parties since the beginning of time) , who at minimum / at best; refuse pursue the crimes of past legislators, and more commonly are thieves themselves, will ever contemplate anything constitutional. These people are part of a club, a club of criminals, and all the rest of us are still slaves, but rather than chains, we are kept bound through a system of deliberately poor education, low wages, high taxes, debt, and only enough medical care to keep at a standard of being able to work.
Its simple, the rich control everything, they use the corrupt system to fill their pockets, we slaves do all the work, they get richer and richer, we stay poor. Sure life is better without our chains on our ankles, but it's better for the rich too. You see we still do all their work, but now that we're free, we have to work even harder, as they no longer provide us with food or a place to sleep.
Don't believe me, look at your life, see how you live, see your future, see your kids future, open your eyes people.

youre living in dreamland John2, there are not billions of people who would want to live in the Bahamas. Notice Lyford Cay is likely one of the highest income per capita subdivisions in the world, the people can afford essentially anything they want, and they don't wanna live there. The majority of them can only stand a few weeks here a few times a year.
Our people are some of the nastiest in the world, our land is flat and barren, on a regional standard we have some of the ugliest Islands. Don't believe me, try and travel the Caribbean and see what's there.
The only people that would "gladly change places" are coming in droves via the Haitian sloops, and these droves of people are made to realize how much they are wanted every day.
You are a typical @ss who's arrogance and delusion drive your mouth (or in this case your keyboard). Why don't you ask a foreigner how much they like participating with our population. You will undoubtedly learn something about how they feel about our greedy, entitled , lazy , corrupt people, and in addition you will learn how they feel about getting the run around by everyone from the cable company when hooking up their cable, to the licensing dept, to the immigration dept etc etc etc.
The Bahamas is a dump, our people are sh!t, and we are on a race to the bottom. We'd have been much further ahead to have begged the British to have kept us as a territory, take a look at Bermuda, BVI, Turks etc etc etc, all much nicer places to be. Admittedly, the Turks is the same type of geographical wasteland, (flat barren land, and also has imported palms, sound familiar).
Get a grip, lose the arrogant attitude, humble yourself and try and be decent and productive, then convince the other 400000 to do the same, and we may one day be a truly desirable place for those other than the poorest people in the world.

what is sadly lost on most people, and clearly not disclosed by the jack@ss quoted in the article is that the retailers here are only paying wholesale price on the goods, then importing in quantity so freight per item is negligible (i.e. how many pairs of jeans fit in a 20' container) and then they gouge the hell out of us.

You can be guaranteed the ripoff retailers are paying less than $1.00 per item on freight, (again when considering a container load/cost per unit). In comparison the consumer pays about $10 per item via Mr.Shipit etc etc.

Cry as they will, these ripoff retailers live in OFB, Prospect ridge , Lyford, Etc Etc Etc, they are rich, not because they work hard, but usually because daddy give em a business or money to start, and they gouge us working class to death!

would you listen to this j@ck@ss, he'd have you believe that when you order online there isn't any duty or freight. when clearly freight on individual shipments is much higher, and therefore the duty applied to freight is higher.

Mr Hoffer said issues such as the cost of freight, import duties and logistics were “only slightly” levelling the playing field for Bahamian retailers. “We have to do things a bit differently,” he added.

The real trouble is that these guys all gouge us consumers, they charge 2 or 3 times what it costs to land the goods...

They should go broke like other retailers anyhow, if online is cheaper then so be it., That's what free markets are all about.