You have no idea what this means for banking in the Bahamas. RBC and BNS will be redoubling their efforts to dispose of their banking operations in the Bahamas as quickly as possible, and who can blame them.

> Servicing Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) $650m refinancing will end the “buddy-buddy system” that has enabled delinquent electricity payers to evade disconnection, a union leader is warning.

>Paul Maynard, The Bahamas Electrical Workers Union’s (BEWU) president, told Tribune Business that bill-ducking customers will be in for a culture shock as they will no longer be able to rely on friends, family and political connections to escape cut-off once the rate reduction bond issue is placed in January 2019.

Wow! Maynard just outrightly and unabashedly announces the existence of the 'do-not-disconnect' corruption that still exists even under the Minnis-led FNM government. Yet no one has gone to prison for the theft of electricity or aiding and abetting the theft of electricity. This simple fact alone should tell potential buyers of the rate reduction bonds that BPL's projected revenues will fall far short of the amounts that the government and BPL have promised would be available to meet the obligations to the bondholders as and when they come due.

It's Bannister, Maynard and the entire Minnis-led FNM government who are going to be shocked by the pitiful revenue stream BPL will have available to make good on its obligations to the rate reduction bond holders. And even the government's continued guarantee of BPL's obligations, including its obligations to the rate reduction bond holders, should be of little comfort to those who have an appreciation for the fact that blood simply cannot be had from a dry stone.

Nothing at all will come of this just like all of the other instances of massive fraud that have been covered up by the more corrupt senior politicians within the PLP and FNM alike. D minus educated Bahamians struggling to make a dollar and keep the government from taking it away from them just don't give a damn. The Bahamas is done, and it's too late for anyone to do a damn thing about it. Just imagine what's been going on at BPL/BEC....and what life will be like in the Bahamas in just a few years from now.

Sadly the FNM too !

Very well said and absolutely spot on in every respect.

Our Minnis-led FNM government has likely undertaken to introduce policies (e.g. outrageously high customs duty rates on solar power systems, etc.) that would make it almost impossible for the vast majority of BPL's customers to be able to afford to switch-over to their own much more economical source of solar power, with the possibility of selling to BPL excess solar generated power they don't need for themselves.

The government's new anti-solar policies would likely be necessary to try keep as many customers as possible on the very costly BPL grid, notwithstanding the outrageously high (and likely unaffordable) rates BPL expects to soon start charging its customers. That way BPL could have a better chance of achieving the targeted annual revenues that both BPL and the government have promised would be available to pay the exorbitant interest and principal amounts that will be due to the buyers of the rate reduction bonds. But as they say, blood can't be had from a dry stone!

And to think all of this is going to happen just when many of BPL's residential and commercial customers were hoping they might be able to switch-over to their own solar power systems as an economical means of getting around BPL's absurdly high electricity rates and unreliable supply of power.

Frankly, all we need to do is accept the deal put on the table by the U.S. government to deal with the entire lot of you forever more. ROWL

What another opinionated lame attempt at trying to rewrite history. The writer is famous for such baloney. LMAO

Oohhh, just love that last sentence of yours....it's a well deserved 'Ouch!' for Carey.