Bahamas News

The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce is hoping to put together a business trade mission to India later this year, The Tribune was told yesterday, building upon the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) it signed last week with its Indian counterpart that will establish the India-Bahamas Joint Business Council.

Philip Simon, the Chamber’s executive director, said: It is our hope that later this year we will be able to arrange and assemble a business trade mission to India, and in the near future they will hope to do the same thing with us.
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A Freeport, Bahamas based manufacturing company will in two weeks time begin talks with a South African pharmaceutical firm about a joint venture to take the active ingredients it makes for antiretroviral drugs into that nations market.

Randy Thompson, administration and business services manager for PharmaChem Technologies, said talks that also involved the Freeport company’s joint venture partner, Gilead Sciences, the Nasdaq 100-listed firm, were set to begin in the week beginning February 14.
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Abaco Markets in the Bahamas yesterday said it expected to generate a net profit in its next fiscal year, providing further evidence that it might be putting a bleak three-and-a-half years behind it by unveiling a 14 per cent increase in its December 1005 sales over the previous year.

The increase in December sales, which included the busy Christmas period, exceeded the company’s expectations and gives shareholders in the Bahamas International Securities Exchange (BISX) listed retail group hope that it is poised for a better future after three successive years of losses and declining share price.
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Two senior accountants in the Bahamas have formed their own company, targeting what they describe as a niche in the market by providing a wide range of non-audit services.

FT Consultants, which began operations on January 3, 2006, was formed by shareholders Maria Ferrere and Alison Treco.

It will provide a wide range of non-audit services, including insolvency, corporate restructuring, forensic accounting, business valuations, financing advice, mergers and acquisitions, financial advisory and company management services.
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Businessmen in the Bahamas and other islands are not taking advantage of Freeport’s Bond system to minimize heavy upfront customs duty payments on materials, goods and vehicles imported solely for use in their business operations.

The was the message coming from several panelists at a seminar on the opportunities presented by doing business in Grand Bahama, where business licensees of the Grand Bahama Port Authority are entitled to apply to the Customs Department for a Bond number and Open Warehouse Status.
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Hutchinson Port Holdings (Bahamas) has concluded an agreement with a leading US-based grocery wholesaler to develop a warehouse/distribution facility at Grand Bahama’s Sea Air Business Centre.

Derek Newbold, Hutchinson Port Holdings (Bahamas) sales and marketing manager, told a seminar on the opportunities presented by doing business in Freeport that the deal with Associated Grocers of Florida would initially see 20 acres of land set aside for development of a 30,000 square foot warehouse.
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A businessman in the Bahamas has contributed to the further expansion of the island of his birth with the investment of a multi-million-dollar shopping centre on Exuma.

On Friday, Roy Bow and his family officially opened the Emerald Isle shopping centre in Emerald Bay, Farmers Hill. The shopping centre is located opposite the Four Seasons Hotel Resort, another of the island’s major investments.

Mr Bowe, a descendant of the settlement of Rolleville, is also one of the founders of Emerald bay.
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Freeport Container Port expects to exceed in 2006 the 1.1 million throughput volume of technical equipment units (TEUs) that it processed in 2005, with its parent company looking at investing $572 million in the port’s long-term expansion, in the Bahamas.

Derek Newbold, Hutchinson Port Holdings (Bahamas) sales and marketing manager, told a seminar on the advantage of doing business in Freeport that the Container Port was the transshipment hub of the Americas.

He said: Over the past five years, we have realized a steady increase in volumes, with the exception of 2004, when hurricanes Frances and Jeanne devastated Freeport.
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The Grand Bahama Port Authority’ (GBPA) licensing committee has only turned down one application from a business in the Bahamas in the past seven years, with an attorney describing the process as the quintessential one stop shop for giving investors red carpet treatment.

Cary Leonard, the GBPA’s general counsel, said its licensing committee, consisting of GBPA executives and two local government representatives, met once a month to approve licence applications from Bahamian businesses. The whole process, on average, took from two to four weeks.
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Some 95 per cent of the 475 commercial land transactions that have taken place in Freeport over the past 20 years have been with businesses and businessmen from the Bahamas, the Grand Bahama Port Authority’s president said.

Addressing a seminar the advantages of doing business in the Bahamas, W. Albert Gray said the Port Authority had just commissioned a world-leading master planner, Ed Stone, to re-master plan Freeport.
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