Biz Bits

As discussions heat up on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, this nation's decision to form its own local competition commission comes to the forefront.

Dr. Carl Greenidge, deputy senior director of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, weighs in: "Many of the countries in this region guard their sovereignty quite jealousy and in addition to independence there are whole set of other things following independence that the countries seek and these have to do with control of institutions that govern everyday life," he told Guardian Business while attending last week's Globalization Conference.

"Clearly The Bahamas recognizes - in doing its own thing- that if you have the market and that market is monopolized by a few operatives it means lower incomes in reality for the people in that market because you're getting things at higher costs that are necessary and output would be optimum."

He said The Bahamas Government must feel it can either, one, "provide the human resources to do it even though the country is quite small and that it can do it more quickly as opposed to waiting for 15 countries to take a decision as opposed to one.

"Or, two, that [one] can setup an entity now, but it does not mean it cannot be merged in the future or that even maybe human resources can't be exchanged. We have to look at these things constructively, I think."