This year may well go down in infamy as one when growth in the country's GDP came in under most Caribbean nations, including the Dominican Republic, Guyana and — brace yourselves — Haiti.
In fact, this month the International Monetary Fund downgraded its projection for real growth in the Bahamian Gross Domestic Product for 2007. The organization is now pegging that number at 3.1 percent, or 0.9 percentage points lower than even three months ago.
The new figure falls just below the 3.2 percent predicted for the neighboring Haitian economy, with a much wider gap between the 8.0 percent logged for the Dominican Republic and the more modest 5.6 percent for Guyana. All are countries considered among the poorest in the region — indeed the hemisphere — and those projected increases suggests those nations are only now, in a substantive way, attracting direct foreign investment.
In fact, IMF downgrading for The Bahamas has everything to do with diminished expectations for just how much of that kind of development will actually happen here before the end of the year.
A final battle over concessions for Baha Mar appears to have idled signing of a final supplemental heads of agreement between it and the new government. That $2.4-billion development, a significant part of it stalled, is being blamed for a lull in the construction and other key industries, which has in turn acted as a drag on the economy.
Of little consolation for Bahamians now complaining of significant under-employment as work hours get cut across the tourism sector is the relatively fine performance of other well-heeled nations in the Caribbean.
According to the same IMF projections, Trinidad & Tobago will see real GDP growth of 6.0 percent this year; Barbados will come in near about where the Bahamas was earlier forecast to climb, a 4.1 percent growth from the year previous. They, too, have been affected by a droopy tourism year, but have maintained foreign investment momentum despite setbacks directly owing to new, more restrictive passport requirements for U.S. citizens.
Those increasingly diversified economies continue to nip at the heels of The Bahamas, with real GDP-per-capita numbers approaching our own $20,000.
If there is any silver lining in the cloud hanging over the Bahamian economy and its slowed pace of development, it may be that it has company.
Again, according to IMF projections, Jamaica, a country still grappling with its shift away from a mining and agricultural economy, as well as Grenada — with its own economy set back 15 years by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 — are also toward the back of the pack.
Jamaica is certainly trailing with GDP growth expected at 1.4 percent. Grenada despite its infrastructure challenges is likely to end the year with an economy 3.0 percent bigger that where it started 2007.
The IMF is predicting a better year for that Eastern Caribbean country, pegging its real GDP growth at 4.0 percent. It's the exact number the international organization is now forecasting for this country, while suggesting its 2.4 percent inflation rate for this year will carry forward.
That last number is now being felt by consumers as they watch the cost of grocery items and gas continue to rise, as many of them face curtailed work hours and smaller paychecks.
But they may well increase after the newyear if tourism picks up and development projects, which were expected to come on stream this year, come to fruition in 2008.
The Minister of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing, at least, seems optimistic.
