...on the edge of my seat, waiting for the "details" of this one... 7 Billion National Debt (ouch!)
Cause Turnquest provided no details so far on how the government will avoid digging a bigger hole financially. I'm tired of hearing about the old government's debt. You're in power, what are you going to do now?

Certainly the Deputy PM is disappointing. No real plans to address national debt. Now the other shoe has fallen. Scary times indeed... it seems there's a great deficit in the ability to anticipate the aggregate grave financial issues we will face shortly if we don't turn this situation around. wake up Bahamas.

Turnquest please stop the cryptic talk. On the point of *transparency* tell us exactly how you plan to *avoid* drawing from the full budgeted 722M. Otherwise these stories are just a waste of ink and a ploy to stay relevant in the headlines. If you don't actually have a realistic plan, this is just devastatingly scary and disappointing. (Over the coming weeks, the PROOF will be in the pudding!)

Country broke + Exorbitant borrowing = Better Country Reputation?? <br/> Just bad math anyway you look at it. (*No wander we have a 'D' National Average.*)

I find this a bit hilarious. I'm really not impressed with D’Aguilar so far. One minute he says that Baha Mar's occupancy was too low because they opened too early. The next minute he says he doesn't want them to have a "cannibalistic" monopoly.
Well, I say competition is good. Case in point: I have never seen BTC offer so many specials before Aliv's opening. If the other resorts are quality resorts, like the other reader said, they have nothing to fear. I guarantee that the resorts that will remain competitive are those that train their staff to offer quality service and accept nothing but the best in professionalism and service. (It seems people just want the money to fall into their laps - work for it, work hard for it.)

Over 700 million is insanely high. Is there no way around this? It's really sad that we are in this state right now. The government needs to be carefully cautious to prevent things from getting even worse in the near future.

Make sense. If the new government has spoken about the corruption of the old administration so much, why would the first thing you do is honor possibly corrupt invoices without properly vetting them first. Who would just pay out $400M without greater scrutiny. Come on Dr. Minnis, let's be wise.

It's so interesting that people right here seem to think there are hardly any trustworthy Bahamians, or many who don't have any business sense. I think that is a warped view of the populace.

We seem to forget that many developed nations have the same policies of putting their citizens first (e.g. UK, Canada - just to name a few). Unemployment is a real issue and I don't think that everyone who unemployed is just lazy, unqualified, or untrustworthy.

Exactly DDK, that was the first thing that caught my eye. I'm sure there are many foreign workers currently in positions that Bahamians could serve in that 'some' Bahamians probably are already qualified for without needing training.
With all the critical needs out there for this country I don't think the National Debt needs to be unnecessarily increased with Workforce training.

Why does every government get so quickly carried away with spending?

You're so right. I wish that parents of under aged children had more accountability in this country when their children commit crimes (especially if neglect is found to be the case).