Puzzled to see how getting loss making BPL off the public books by selling it to the private sector so it no longer required guarntees is not in the best interests of the Bahamas.

What;s the downside a private owner could keep rates at $100 per barrel oil and just not pass on any of the savings when oil went to $50/barrel and then $20 per barrel?! Ah, that is already happening, notice rates did not go down despite the huge fall on oil prices since 2014.

Oil sure helped out Venezuela to become a paradise right?

Newfoundland in Canada is now essentially bankrupt man years after finding oil. Oil is a curse!

Just look how "wonderful" is places like Nigeria. By contrast places with oil like Panama and Uruguay are much nicer and better off. I vote for the Bahamas being more like Panama and less like oil rich Venezuela!

Indeed cuts to government spend should have made long ago, when VAT got raised and then raised again. It can not all be on the backs of the general public, and besides with few spending now, spending must be cut, there is no alternative. It can not be borrow, borrow, some people need to start taking haircuts and not paid at 100 cents on the dollar, if that dollar all has to come from the general public. In light of what we can afford now public pensions need to be recast in light of current circumstances. The Central Bank must make clear it will not bail anyone out and its sole priority will be keeping the dollar peg no matter what comes.

So your official ask then is for more of the status quo?

Surely any solution that keeps the existing shareholders and controlling interest direction can work no better than what has happened before?

Given the PowerSecure failure, the independant director failing, the reorg to BPL failing, everything else has been tried and outright privitization is the ONLY solution left?

It can surely be no worse, so what is the downside to trying this?

Higer rates? Poor service? lol

sell it!

btw cuc in Cayman does much better privitized, this is not a "hard" model to copy. Much lower rates even and far ahead in renewables too. Some problems, hard, this one, not.

Was the ship in Bahamian waters when it returned its cargo to the United States ? If so then we why was an export back out of Bahamian waters authorized by the Bahamian government? eg. US jurisdiction ended the minute this ship was outside the direct 12 mile territorial zone of the US. Clearly jurisdiction over Bahamain ships in Bahmain waters (or international waters) is not US unless we have become a state and no one has informed me? (The 200 mile US/Bahamas EEZ only applies to things like fishing or oil drilling not transit)

Given the highly privalleged access we give to the US coast guard to patrol Bahamain waters under permission, I am a bit surprised such an order would be given in light of this highly prvillaged right.

We allow smoking, so no reason why no pot.

You know its been required to justify work permits for decades now right? There's a reason permits are just for specialized or in demand fields or otherwise of benefit.

What is the response of the government to this?

Does Bahamian law not apply once the ship is inside Bahamian waters? (and then technically would require Bahamian customs/government authority to exit the Bahamas or sail out)

Typically we do only customs clearing when you enter, but customs can always have jurisdiction on ships or planes which leave the Bahamas.

We can only hope this industry ceases to function and does not return.

It has left tourism dependant nations with pennies on the dollar for value from its tourists.

All the money goes to offshore ship builders, offshore workers, and of course cruise ship owner profits (none of which are taxed really), but with a few dollars a few might spend on Bay Street for the Bahamas. Those few dollars have never been enough to really run a modern Bahamas, as economic metrics surely attest to.

Good riddance to this industry and lets see the upside here in that when tourism rebounds we can (with the right government policies and actions) hopefully channel it towards land based hotels that are more sustianable and provide higher income and per visitors spends to allow the Bahamas to recover from this mess and of course rebuild from Dorian and save some money away for the next huricane event(s).

Lots of videos on YouTube now about how bad this industry is from an ecological point of view too, lets not forget that.

It would be called banning cruise ships which would then lead to new hotel construction when the COVID issue is over.