NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) has seen its number of licensees increase just under 20 percent post-Hurricane Dorian, a senior executive said yesterday.
Derek Newbold, the GBPA’s chief investment officer while addressing the Grand Bahama Business Outlook conference acknowledged that there has been an oversaturation in some business categories which has been unsustainable for some businesses.
“We live in a free market system and that has led to over-saturation of a cross section of business categories, he said.
“That oversaturation in gems of competition has been unsustainable for certain businesses. We could have introduced a moratorium but we didn’t want to stifle the spirit of Grand Bahamians. We wanted to incentivize diversification instead,” said Newbold.
He noted that the GBPA introduced a business diversity waiver where new businesses could apply for a license and have the first year of their business license waived for up to 70 percent if their business falls outside the category of those saturated sectors.
“Grand Bahamians are resilient people. We are getting a number of license applications related to new innovative businesses. Going into Hurricane Dorian we had 2,872 licenses. Today our total licensee count stands at 3,400. That is an increase of 20 percent in new businesses over the past three years,” said Newbold.
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