The Prime Minister traveled to New York City this weekend to attend meetings of the Clinton Global Initiative headed by former US President Bill Clinton.
The Hon. Philip Davis addressed the gathering on Monday. In his remarks he spoke about the natural that have affected The Bahamas. “A cruel irony is that for those four massive hurricanes it cost us billions leaving us with little fiscal space we need to get ready for the next storms. Topping the list of countries must vulnerable to climate change it makes borrowing more expensive for me. Every single day we are paying for the hurricanes we have already suffered and the ones still ahead of us. In addition, our nation’s middle income designation leaves us unable to access fair and concessional financing for recovery and adaptation. This traps us in a cycle in which the servicing of our debt leaves very little to invest in building our resilience,” Davis said.
The Prime Minister also informed of what his administration is doing to mitigate the impact this situation. He said, “we’re working with other small island nations to fight for emissions reductions. We are strengthening our ability to respond to hurricanes and we have launched a national youth guard so that young Bahamians can work along side our disaster response teams and our national security forces. We’re going to survive an era of super charged storms by creating super charged win win investment partnerships. With our strategic advisors, resilience capital ventures, we will work with regional and global capital market leaders to underwrite and place an innovative financial facility with a target of initially $500 million US dollars.”
The Prime Minister and his delegation are expected to return to the country on Wednesday.
