As Bahamians prepared for a festive holiday season, trying to put aside the ‘shock and awe’ created by the Leader of The Opposition’s senate selections, it would appear that the governing Progressive Liberal Party (PL) had its own ‘shock and awe’ for its people just in time for Christmas as the credit rating agency, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) downgraded the country’s credit rating, yet again.

“Junk Status” – The Nassau Guardian

Excerpt from this article; “Standards and Poor’s (S&P), the world’s largest credit rating agency yesterday downgraded the Bahamas’ sovereign credit rating to sub investment-grade level, widely considered ‘junk status’, in a grim economic report on the country’s fiscal health and future.

The international ratings giant dropped the credit rating by one notch to ‘BB+/B’ from ‘BBB-/A-3’, along with a threat to lower the credit rating over the next two years if public finances continue to ‘deteriorate’, although it did elevate the country’s outlook from negative to stable.

This is the fourth downgrade from a major ratings agency since the current Christie administration took office.”

Last night I saw a post on social media concerning this and I thought to myself that this must be wrong, we could not have gotten here, not with the great strides which have been taken in tax reform [Value-Added Tax, which has netted over a billion dollars and it is claimed has outpaced its projections] in order to lower the country’s deficit and improve our credit rating and economic outlook, and with constant reassurances from the government that they know what they are doing.

In July of this year, the ratings agency, Moody’s issued a warning to the government that it was looking to downgrade the country’s sovereign credit rating; at the time Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Michael Halkitis claimed that the government knows ‘what to do to prevent [a] Moody’s downgrade’, at this time Standards and Poor’s was holding its position and had taken a wait and see approach; since this time both rating agencies have downgraded the countries sovereign credit rating, so either the present government does not know what to do or they just simply failed at what they had proposed, so moving forward what is their plan?

“The government is disappointed in this development [the downgrade], and is of the view that S&P’s decision does not give appropriate weight to important developments on the ground, nor the Bahamas’ strong commitment to address its economic and fiscal challenges.

The Government remains focused on its plans to grow the economy, through responsible, balanced and sustainable policy initiatives and measures.  The Government recognizes the centrality and imperative of the economic growth objectives to reducing domestic risk factors: – strong economic growth is required to generate more job opportunities for Bahamians and to support the near-terms goals of a balanced budget and sustainable debt-to-GDP ratios.”

For some strange reason this all sounds like, ‘Don’t worry, we know what we are doing’, all over again and it is clear that this government is totally out of it depth.  Simply put, you cannot continuously attempt to reassure the people of The Bahamas and convince them that you know what you are doing when your record of failures to these people over the past four plus years speak for itself and leaves them with the prospects of a bleak holiday season and anxious as to what the New Year will bring.

The Progressive Liberal Party fails for one reason, it is their nature.

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