Government News: Top Stories

Bahamas economy showing signs of recovery - PM

Reuters Translate This Article
2 December 2010

* Revival seen in tourism and foreign direct investment

* Infrastructure, construction projects helping jobs

MIAMI (Reuters) - Bahamas' economy, battered by the global economic crisis over the last two and a half years, is showing signs of recovery with revivals in tourism and foreign investment, the islands' prime minister said on Thursday.

'Now there are distinct signs that the worst is over and that the tide is beginning to turn,' Hubert Ingraham said in a speech to businessmen in Nassau. A text of the speech was sent to Reuters in Miami.

Like many small Atlantic and Caribbean island states, Bahamas, an offshore financial center and popular tourism destination located southeast of Florida, was hard hit by the international economic downturn.

Ingraham said Bahamas' real gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by an estimated 4.5 percent in 2009, dragged down by a 22 percent decline in foreign direct investment and a 10 percent fall in tourism stop-over arrivals. These tourism arrivals had also dropped by more than 6 percent in 2008.

But both tourism and foreign investment were showing significant revivals, signaling 'that these are early signs of an economic recovery in the works,' the prime minister said.

The tourism sector in the last five months had shown significant improvements over the corresponding period in the previous year, he said.

Ingraham also pointed to a 3.5 percent increase in foreign direct investment in the first six months of 2010, indicating a reversal of the previous downward slide.

Unemployment, which had risen to an estimated more than 14 percent at the end of 2009, also appeared to have leveled off, Ingraham said, noting some companies had begun hiring again.

The prime minister said he was encouraged by ongoing infrastructure and construction projects, both private and public, as well as proposed foreign investment deals.

Among the latter, he mentioned the announcement of the proposed sale of 51 percent of state-owned Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), the exclusive mobile operator in the Bahamas, to UK's Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC.L) for $210 million.

(Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Jane Sutton)

Copyright 2010 Reuters. Reprinted with permission from Reuters. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters Sphere Logo are registered trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world. For additional information about Reuters content and services, please visit Reuters website at www.reuters.com. License # REU-5918-MES

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world from good news reported by the press; and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based-Total Knowledge based-programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.

Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google)
(Altavista babelfish)

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.