Minister of Finance, the Hon. Michael Halkitis appeared at a press briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister on Thursday where he fielded questions from reporters on this year’s budget and other matters.
The finance minister defended the decision to move $700 million in loan proceeds to the National Investment Fund. He said, “we didn’t want to do just $700 million in the refinancing because what we find is if you do larger size, up to a billion, there’s more liquidity, more people buy it, it’s more attractive for other investors to get involved because there’s more liquidity. They could move different so that is why we did that. In everything we do we are advised by our attorneys, the Attorney General, banks attorneys and we do it according to law.”
Halkitis also provided an update on the audit being carried out at the Bahamas Public Parks and Public Beaches Authority. There have been calls for greater oversight at the state owned enterprise that exceeded its allocated budget of $29 million in nine months.
He said, “they were completed just some weeks ago. I not sure if they have been laid as yet. Audited financial statements I think going back up to 2024. I think there was maybe about five or six years, if I recall correctly, that had not been done. And so they were recently completed and I expected that audited financials statements for 2025 will be done and same for 2026. And going forward we don’t have this lag where you have multiple years of outstanding financial statements.”
The awarding of no bid contracts was a point of contention during the recent 2026 election campaign. The finance minister referred to the Public Procurement Act saying, “if you look at section 31 of the Public Procurement Act, its about four pages long, that section. Section 31 deals with direct award contracts. And so the first thing I want to say is no bid contracts are allowable under the legislation and in fact there are so many instances where no bid contracts are allowed that it takes up four pages of the act.”
Halkitis presentation the 2026-2027 budget communication in the House Of Assembly on Wednesday.
