NASSAU, Bahamas — Of the 600 to 700 businesses in the Over-the-Hill community, only 200 of them are considered formal businesses. This was revealed by Financial Secretary Marlon Johnson Wednesday and is being used as a springboard to encourage the reintroduction of commercial activity in that community, the Bahama Journal reported on May 4.
During a recent town hall meeting on the Over-the-Hill Community Development Partnership Initiative, White Paper, Mr. Johnson said that a survey conducted in 2016 uncovered that many of the businesses in the community were not in the formal sector.
“So, you have business going on — you all know it, you live in the communities — yet a relatively small number are registered and formalized,” Mr. Johnson said. “A lot of the prevailing wisdom is you avoid getting registered because you don’t have to pay your tax, your business licence fees or because it had been a hassle in a lot of ways to get registered. The challenge with that when you are outside the formal community is getting access to credit, getting access to concessions, it becomes difficult.”
The Financial Secretary added that the “happy challenge we have is to lower the barriers for businesses within the community to become a part of the formal sector and find ways to become low cost and low hassle and that then opens the door for them in the formal sector to access credit and get the concessions and the things they need in order to go and to thrive.”
