THE GREEN PAPER ON FREEPORT IS NOT CATASTROPHIC
Prime Minister Davis in Freeport on 21 October 2026
In an exclusive interview with the Northern Service of ZNS News with Romeko Knowles, the Chairman of the PLP Fred Mitchell on 30 October 2026 pushed back on the view espoused by former President of the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce that what the PLP proposes for Grand Bahama and Freeport in its green paper will be catastrophic. Here is what he said in his own words:
Well, first of all in terms of responses, I don’t want to personalize this in any sense, because my comments are all generic, except for the word catastrophic. It was used by one of the actors in Freeport. One of the former chamber presidents, I believe it is, and what concerns me is that if you look at what the Prime Minister actually said in his statement, if you go to gbframework.com and read the green paper, you will see that this is all laid out in quite a logical and measured position. There is no question of expropriation.
There’s no question of doing things which are outside the law. For people to characterize something as catastrophic is simply irresponsible, because it’s not; so it’s not catastrophic. I think people don’t understand what catastrophic means and perhaps they ought to go to the dictionary and look it up again, but catastrophic is hurricane Dorian.
So what people are saying is by this comment “catastrophic”, is that what the PLP proposes to do for Grand Bahama is going to be like hurricane Dorian. That’s complete nonsense. That’s foolishness, and I think it needs to be pushed back on. I’ve asked our supporters to get involved in helping to support the public dialogue on this issue, which is looking at the facts of what exists in Freeport. The government has in fact been carrying the city now for 20 years or more. You know that I’ve been involved in taking various tours around the city. I propose to do another one when I return to the Bahamas on the 14th November 2026. I am coming up there to show people in Nassau and around the Bahamas what Freeport now looks like compared to what it should be.
The Grand Bahama Port authority sold off all its assets with the exception of the water corporation. So right now, all they’re doing is collecting fees from licensees.
The question is, what do those licensees get in return? The Port doesn’t promote the city as they should. They are not attracting new investment to the city as they should. The government has been doing all of this, and so what’s the issue?
If the truth becomes, in fact, what is the law that’s the only issue that’s being put before people. So there’s nothing dramatic or catastrophic about this, and the debate should be measured, it should be truthful.
It should be factual, and what I will show when I come to Grand Bahama is the fact that the roads, for example, are falling apart.
Now last week or maybe even yesterday, there was an announcement in the newspaper about the roads, an additional million dollars or something they’re going to be spending. The total is about 2.6 million, anyway, that is less than three million dollars. We know that roads in The Bahamas cost a million dollars a mile to fix. So how many, how much can they actually fix with that?
I mean, this is a pittance. If you go to Bahamia, the roads are in terrible shape.
You go all around the city. They haven’t picked up the garbage from Dorian, the refuse from Dorian, then there is the failure of the promotion of the city itself, and the failure to attract investment. The international airport, they got rid of for a dollar. The hotel they got rid of that. They are involved in litigation now that is stopping the investors from developing, further developing Port Lucaya, that is a shadow of itself. They sold Port Lucaya.
So it begs the question, what do we do?
This agreement runs out 2054. It is underperforming now, and we should not wait until the end to determine what happens to make sure that this asset stops its underperformance, and delivers what it can for the Bahamian public.