The construction industry is carrying the majority of the economic load right now, according to a past president of the Bahamian Contractors Association (BCA), who added that rebuilding efforts on Abaco make up the bulk of activity in the country right now.
Leonard Sands said while contractors are beginning to see more and more revitalization in the local residential market, Abaco right now is driving about 80 percent of the construction activity in the second home builders market.
“They’re trying to really re-establish all of the houses that got damaged during Hurricane Dorian on all of the islands in the Abaco chain, so you’re talking about tens of millions of dollars every single couple of months being pumped into those islands. We’re talking about Man O’War Cay, Baker’s Bay and the surrounding cays. Enormous construction is going on right now, so much so that there is no place for people to stay. The demand is so incredible that if you want to go there to do work and you’re qualified to do the work and they hire you, you have to figure out where you’re going to sleep. It’s a challenge,” he said.
“What we’re not appreciating in New Providence is that there’s $300 million going into the (new US Embassy) site on Shirley Street, there’s another $300 million project in the port, that’s over half a billion dollars pumped into less than a square mile, that’s affecting a lot of things. Not to mention there’s Old Fort Bay that has a lot of development going on there, Lyford Cay slowed a bit but activity through the gate is quite consistent and obviously Albany has been at the same pace the last ten years. So the Central Bank is correct, right now the number one activity that is sustaining our economy is construction closely followed by tourism.”
But even with this tremendous amount of growth and output from the construction sector, The Central Bank of The Bahamas last week said more could be done to further bolster the economy.
Its Governor John Rolle said in a quarterly press briefing that there is at least $200 million or so in funds that came into The Bahamas following Hurricane Dorian that have not been used and would be better spent on rebuilding rather than sitting in the country’s reserves.
“What I’d like to know is who is going to be spending the money on what. Is the government going to spend the money on infrastructure to support private home building or is the government going to build the homes of persons and buildings of businesses that would have lost everything? I think the answer to that is really going to determine how the money is going to be spent,” Sands said when asked about the matter.
He added that the sector is strong enough to support more activity in terms of workforce and material availability, given the global shortages on building supplies.
“In New Providence a lot of the construction materials that are sourced are sourced locally, there is a lot of imports for building supplies just because of the nature of some of the projects and they can’t help that but a lot of the lumber suppliers are doing incredibly well. In fact in the last 12 months there are new lumber suppliers that have opened up, so that speaks to the performance of the local construction industry being able to sustain growth in that sector. There are at least two new building suppliers that have opened up in the southwest, that only can happen if there is an incredible amount of sales in that market, so that’s good,” Sands said.
“In terms of the workforce, still about 85 percent of the workforce are Bahamian and whatever expats there are is about ten percent and anything beyond that is whatever specialists have to come into the country. I think we’re seeing very strong employment in the sector. Can there be greater employment? Possibly, but more projects are coming on stream.”
The post Construction pulling the majority of economic load, says contractor appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/construction-pulling-the-majority-of-economic-load-says-contractor/
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