Flipping Grand Bahama

REMARKS MADE BY CAREY LEONARD AT THE ROTARY CLUB OF GRAND BAHAMA SUNRISE HELD AT “GENEVA’S RESTAURANT” WEDNESDAY, 17 TH FEBRUARY 2016 “Mister President, Rotary members and guests, let’s get Freeport to work” I say that because the future of the Port Area, the future economic impact that the Port Area has on East and West Grand Bahama, the future of Grand Bahama as a whole, is in your hands. “Not my hands,” you say.  To which I reply, “Yes, your hands and mine too”.  This is the year 2016 and it does not, in any way resemble the years 1991 -1993, the years when the Hawksbill Creek Agreement was last extended. 2016 is different in so many areas of our economy, not just of the Port Area and the rest of Grand Bahama, but that of the entire Bahamas. According to the latest news reports, unemployment is running at a staggering 15.7% and it is even higher in the Country’s most populous island, New Providence. In 1993 the unemployment rate was 13.1%. The Nationa...

As the title says, this was the topic addressed by Carey Leonard at the recent Business Outlook Grand Bahama. I want to share his entire presentation. 2015 is a very important year, not only for the stakeholders here in the Port Area on Grand Bahama, but also for our country, as a whole. This year we are faced with an opportunity; we are at a crossroads; we are at a point in time when we can either make decisions that are truly innovative and life changing as the original Hawksbill Creek Agreement in 1955 or we can take a conservative, botched up band aid approach as we did in the 1990s. All that was done in the early 90 was to extend to 2015 that which had already existed. The results were a couple of new investments, container port and shipyard, though nice, which can in no way be compared to the massive investment that created the infrastructure and massive development that were created in the first 20 years of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement. In this presentation it is going to ...