Source: Date: Updated: |
TheBahamasInvestor.com
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 Tuesday, March 1, 2011 |
The government has announced it will establish a new Grand Bahama business development board to drive investment to the island and promote its potential.
Addressing the thirteenth annual Grand Bahama Business Outlook last week, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance Zhivargo Laing said that the new board would be a partnership between the government, the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) and the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce.
Its duties will include promoting investment in Grand Bahama, examining business procedures and creating strategies for growth and development.
“The idea is to create an entity whose sole job is to figure out how to make this island’s economy grow–to interest people into coming to this island and investing, whether that is people from Nassau or the United States or Latin America or Asia,” said the Minister.
“This island has tremendous potential, but somebody has to tell its story and we hope the board will do that.”
Minister Laing said that the government would provide an initial grant of $500,000 to the board, with the Chamber of Commerce and GBPA matching this figure.
$250,000 of this has been set aside for investment promotion.
The exact details of how the new entity will operate are yet to be finalized, but the Minister said that it would function similarly to the Bahamas Financial Services Board (BFSB) in terms of collaborating with the private sector.
The theme of the one-day Business Outlook conference was “Grand Bahama Game Plan 2011: Review, Re-strategize, Reposition.”
Attendees at the conference, which took place at the Our Lucaya resort in Freeport, also heard from director of the National Insurance Board Algernon Cargill; Jeffrey Butler, chief executive officer of Butler’s Food World; and David Johnson, Director General of Tourism in the Ministry of Tourism and Aviation.
cboal@dupuch.com