yes, governments just borrows the money from the ppl.

the local banks are full of money because no one has anything to do with their money under lock down.

hey, hold on one sec.

what happened to da $1.1m yinna nassau ppl done get from da IDB for sponging in long island last year?

https://ewnews.com/long-island-to-expan…

i hope some a dis gravy money trickle down to long island. tank god long islanders are indepenedent and don't depend on nassau like dem ppl in Marsh Harbour, Ragged Island and Freeport.

Marsh Harbour still don't have lights, water in freeport bad bad.

Actually the government is running with no cash flow issues. Don’t mind Turnquest crying poor mout.

Besides VAT and customs duty which they are still getting, cruise ship and hotel taxes are being offset by cash from Government Bonds issued to Bahamians and international loans at rock bottom interest rates from the imf, oecd and the World Bank.

Bahamians and Banks are all to ready to lend the Government their money at 5%. Beats having to lend it out to non existent Bahamian businesses!

So the Bahamian government doesn’t need to lay off staff albeit many government departments like the international mail at the post office, Bahamas Air and Ministry of Education are either shut down or close to shut down.

Minnis already said he don’t believe in letting go staff.

This is an excellent blog. Wish the conversation could continue and not scroll down where everyone looses interest.

My second point. We just don't have any good statistics and the insurance industry and the government, for what ever reason, has no interest in collecting or distributing the data.

Key questions are

(1) how much money is the insurance industry collecting from 3rd party insurance which is a complete nonsense. Insurance should be no fault and all parties covered. Otherwise we are all self insuring.

(2) how much is the insurance paying out in claims for 3rd party insurance

(3) how many ppl have 3rd party insurance

(4) how many cars are on the road which have zero insurance?

purposefully

An industry of the future!

The rating agencies have downgraded all the cruise lines as junk.

Anyone who thinks that ships filled with 5,000 ppl and zero social distancing will be back in business on October 1 is wishful thinking.

So what happens to the $150 million in bonds? Bay Street shut down and laying off. So we will build another Baystreet along the shore?

I never heard so much nonsense in my life.

Almost as bad as the $650 million BEC bond to be paid by consumers who are not paying electricity bills.

Don't forget the hotel freeport being bought by a cruise ship which is going bankrupt.

Meanwhile, the government has no economic plan....except lock down.

Excellent point!

I've been paying $400 a year for almost 4 decades for third party.

If we cancel this insurance the savings on over 100,000 cars would be $40 million a year.

....but maybe ppl are already saving because of the 19% drop in insurance coverage!

I am comparing the actions of the Bahamian government to those of Cayman (Compass Compass) and the Turks and Caicos (Turks and Caicos Weekly) both newspapers can be received online. Cayman and TCI are colonies of the UK and therefore their governments are run much more efficiently and correctly.

We are all doing the same thing except for the Bahamian governments propensity to questionably and probably unconstitutionally fiddle with private agreements at worse and at best to rule in a dictatorial and none consultative manner.

With the BEC Rate Bond, which thankfully failed, the government was attempting to force BEC customers to assume $650 million of BEC debt. This is legally impossible under contract law because BEC clients signed up to purchase electricity from BEC and not to assume their debt for zero consideration. Did these guys take Intro to Law 101 in College?

The issue with the insurance companies is far more interesting because I believe they can do it under the Emergency Powers Act. In fact they can do almost anything under the act which is why Cayman probably didn't use it to enforce their "soft" and "hard" curfews. TCI used the Emergency Powers Act.

My fear is what private property is next for the government to "take over" under the Act with zero consultation with steak holders?

Simple tax collection procedures such as mandated direct payment to the government on the same day that the employees are paid would immediately resolve this issue. In the US special payroll companies such as ADP are used as intermediaries and credit the payment to the employees bank account at the same time the government is paid social security and other tax payments.

There is zero penalty for not immediately paying the government except for customs duties (you don't get your merchandise) and VAT (interest penalties for late payments).

We can therefore expect, because there are zero penalties, that during this CoVID 19 lock down virtually no one to pay BEC, Water and Sewerage, Real Property Tax, BTC, VAT, mortgage payments and will push back out of rent payments. There are ppl in the country that can pay these bills but there is zero incentive to pay anything.

Having a credit bureau and “FICO” score for each Bahamian adult would go along to encourage Bahamians to pay their BEC bill.

With such credit monitoring systems if you don’t pay your BEC bill your score goes down so when you go to the bank for credit they will view you as a higher risk which would restrict your ability to trade.

BEC asks for a deposit which is inadequate because by the time they turn off your lights the deposit has long been exhaustived.

In developed countries deposits must be returned to customers after one year.