Grand Bahama residents have for months been complaining about the rising cost of living, including exorbitant food and gas prices and high utility bills.

While the economy continues to lag, residents appear hopeful that proposed capital investments like Ross University in 2009 and the reopening of the Royal Oasis Hotel will come to fruition.

With word of millions about to be pumped into the fragile Grand Bahama economy via construction of the university and continued multi-million dollar renovations at VOPAK (BORCO), President of the Grand Bahama Christian Council Rev. Sobig Kemp suggested that financial institutions need to help aspiring entrepreneurs.

"What is needed right now is that we need to give persons who are interested in starting their business some capital to get their businesses going. The small business is what keeps the economic engine turning," he told The Journal on Thursday.

"So indeed the financiers have any faith in the Bahamian people, they would be more willing to allow the resources that they have to be entrusted to the Bahamian people. If that happens, we can actually make something happen from that point," Rev. Kemp advised.

He said he recognizes that there are challenges ahead on the way to economic recovery and that the economy might even be very slow in turning but advocated proper budgeting by residents.

"We need to get back to basics and exist on the basics until we can do much better. But we do need to have some kind of impetus in order to generate and get things going," he said.

Entrepreneur Erica Dean told our news team that her business is now suffering and she is looking to the government to find a solution.

"There is a serious economic pinch. Things are dead. Grand Bahama especially is down. It is like Grand Bahama has stopped. Probably something needs to be done in the tourism sector. That’s our main focus and we depend on the tourists…maybe be should only be focusing on tourism. We need something else to boost the economy," she said.

Leslie Gibson of Hudson Estates, meanwhile, feels like the economic problems are the result, in major part, because of a monopoly of Freeport by the Grand Bahama Port Authority.

"I think the first thing that needs to be done is that the government of The Bahamas needs to govern Grand Bahama. In my view, the Port Authority should have been done away with when that contract expired. With them having sole control of Grand Bahama, [in my view] it’s hard to get business license and it seems as if only their friends can get it,…there are many obstacles keeping us back," Mr. Gibson said.

"Since the hurricanes came around, it seems as if Grand Bahama went barren. Everybody went elsewhere for jobs. They said that the Princess (Royal Oasis) was not a sole entity or keeper of Grand Bahama, but it was because it employed almost 80 per cent of persons on the island," he said.

Mr. Gibson said that authorities can’t seem to make up their mind of what Grand Bahama will be synonymous for – tourism or industrialism.

He said when the children graduate from high school they need to have alternatives from studying law, or medicine and should know when they return to Grand Bahama from college, they would have studied a profession that would be needed on the island.

City of Freeport’s Chief Councilor Alvin Smith is also optimistic that Grand Bahama’s economy will soon bounce back.

"Investors, whether they are international investors or Bahamian investors need to have confidence that they are going to get a return on whatever investment they put into the economy. I think with the introduction of Ross University coming to Grand Bahama in January 2009, signals that the economy is stable enough and vibrant enough for international investors to still look at Freeport," Mr. Smith said.

Ross University anticipates providing an additional $35 to $60 million dollars in construction spending during its initial three to five years of operation, significantly impacting the construction sector of the economy.

"We are going to have a lot of medical students who are going to need homes, who are going to need to shop, and who will need to go to the grocery store, who will need to buy lunch. There will be faculty members doing the same thing. So I think that in short order, while we are in a transitional period, I think the economy will slowly start to rebound," Mr. Smith said.

"We just had the recent purchase of the BORCO facility by Vopak. It is another indication that somebody sees something in our economy that is sound and strong to invest. I just want to encourage everybody in Grand Bahama to hold on. Things will get better. The economy will improve and we will see boom days again in Grand Bahama," he said.

In February, the Harcourt Group – the buyers of the Royal Oasis Resort – signed a 30-year agreement with prominent United States hotel operator Foxwoods Development Company to manage the hotel, which has been closed since 2004.

Joseph Colebut, chairman of Foxwoods, said then that there would be approximately 1,000 construction jobs during the redevelopment of the Royal Oasis and a thousand permanent jobs available once the hotel becomes operational.

Source: The Bahama Journal