Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Peter Turnquest is maintaining that the Minnis Administrations  is  working to reduce the country’s over dependence on tourism and the financial services industry.

According the  Mr. Turnquest,  progress is being made although not as quickly as he would like.

“If  you look even within the tourism sector and how we are trying to diversify that sector and broaden it to a national perspective, when you look at the work that we’re doing in the Small Business Development Center where we’re trying to encourage organic, natural, sustainable and renewable type businesses.  We’re making every effort to try facilitate this broadening that we’re talking about, like 

the investments in agriculture and trying to broaden this economic base so that we can try to take out some of the errors that happened as a result of recessions and global events that has an effect on tourism,” the Deputy Prime Minister said.    

In 2018 the the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) noted that within a decade,  The Bahamas will become more dependent on the tourism industry,  with it generating almost 60 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. 

Before coming to office,  the FNM promised  it  would reduce the countries dependency on both industries. 

The WTTC also noted that the sector’s GDP and investment growth rates will accelerate even faster than this year over the 10-year period to 2018.

The Council  stated  that travel and tourism investment in 2017 was $442.5 million, 18.6 per cent of total investment. 

It had expected to rise by 2.8 per cent in 2018, and by 3.2 per cent per annum over the next 10 years to $621.1 million in 2028, 22 per cent of the total.