Bahamas ‘Looking To U.S.’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31317, 13 March 1967, Page 13

Bahamas ‘Looking To U.S.’

(From FRANK OLIVER. N.Z.P.A. special correspondent f

BOCA GRANDE (Florida), Mar. 12. Quietly and with an absence of dramatics the British possessions of the Caribbean area are changing. The area will never be quite the same again. A few days ago the Union Jack was lowered in islands of storybook fame, St Kitts, St Lucia, Antigua, Dominica and Grenada, as they took the first big steps between colonialism and full independence. They became States associated with the Commonwealth, governing themselves and leaving just defence and foreign affairs in the hands of the mother country. The unresolved question at the moment is who shall be their banker? On that the whole future course of the island States seems to hinge.

Obviously for the present London will be the banker of the new States. There is talk of an American-Canadian-British consortium to promote development in the Caribbean generally and to provide enough industry to create jobs. But to those who look on themselves as hard-headed realists it seems inevitable that these newly independent States will have to join the dollar bloc eventually. The five new States mentioned, with a total population of some 400,000, make ends meet, more or less, by selling sugar and bananas to Britain at premium prices but unemployment is fairly high and living standards leave something to be desired. As far as can be seen these new States cannot, in present circumstances, be self-sup-porting. At best with so little industry a population of that size will certainly find it hard to make a viable way of life and the feeling on the American mainland is that some kind

of confederation between the five to tackle mutual problems is necessary and it is expected that as in the cases of Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad, the new States will turn more and more to the nearby United States and South America for trade and for a continuation of the flow of tourists and tourist dollars without which independent existence will be difficult. The Bahamas under their new all-Negro Government are looking more and more towards the Florida mainland than to London, say reports from Nassau.. A correspondent of the “Miami Herald” has been in touch with Dr. R. Petrie, a Canadian economist, who was in the islands before the Pindling Government came to power, making an economic and monetary survey of the Bahamas.

The newspaper says that Dr. Petrie’s report, not yet published, reveals the enormous extent of American economic

penetration into the Island economy. The Bahamian economy, says Dr. Petrie in an interview, is more heavily dependent on the tourist trade than virtually any other country in the world, so much so that

the intimate enmeshment of the colonial economy with the United States created a quasi-dollar status. More than 65 per cent of Bahamian trade is with the

United States, 90 per cent of its exports go to the United States and 60 per cent of its imports come from the American mainland. American land holdings in

the Bahamas are believed to outrank all other foreign holdings. No-one appears to know how much American and Canadian money is invested in .the islands. In addition the gambling casinos take in vast amounts of dollars and so do the shops

of Nassau, not to mention the hotels and what the “Miami Herald” correspondents call “tourist traps.”