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A Miniature Zurich. The campaign worked, despite the fact that the U.B.P.'s paternalistic reign has had some rather impressive results in the Bahamas. Under Premier Symonette and Finance and Tourism Minister Sir Stafford Sands, the islands' economy is booming. Industrial development is spurting, thanks to the Bahamas' cheap labor, plentiful land and absence of income taxes. To lure international funds, the government has turned the islands into a miniature Zurich and induced 77 banks to set up shop, offering 6% interest rates and secret, coded accounts —no questions asked.
But most of all, there is the tourism, which now accounts for more than 90% of the islands' $150 million annual income. Last year, a record 800,000 vacationers poured into the Bahamas, and by 1968 the total should reach more than 1,000,000 a year, which would leave the islands second only to Puerto Rico in Caribbean tourist traffic. Whether they stay at Lyford Cay, Canadian Millionaire E. P. Taylor's resort on New Providence Island, or at any of the more modest hotels that are budding just about everywhere, the tourists leave a bundle of foreign exchange behind. Last year, for the convenience of its predominantly American visitors, the Bahamas even switched the official currency from pounds to dollars.
Change on Many Fronts. To keep the tourists coming, developers and investors are sinking millions of dollars into the islands. Former Wall Street Financier Wallace Groves acquired 150,000 acres of scrubland on Grand Bahama Island in the late 1950s, and through his Port Authority has turned it into a $400 million resort center called Freeport, with six hotels, two gambling casinos, and a commercial and industrial complex of 800 licensed businesses. Aluminum Executive J. Louis Reynolds is converting 13,000 acres on Andros Island into a housing, resort and commercial development that will include a U.S.-British navy undersea research and training center. Pan American's Juan Trippe is developing a section of Eleuthera, has thus far built a private golf course, a 100-room hotel and a nightclub, and has even added a jet strip and two flights a day out of Nassau. Other developments are being pushed on Abaco, Great Exuma, Cat Island and Paradise Island.
Pindling has no illusions about the problems he will face as the islands' first Negro Premier. The old ways of doing business in the Bahamas are deeply entrenched, and Pindling's unproven party will have to win the confidence and respect of investors. A quiet, Nassau-born barrister who earned an LL.B. at the University of London, Pindling promises full-scale reforms that will benefit all instead of just a select minority. "There will be change in direction and emphasis on many fronts," he vowed last week in his drab little law office in downtown Nassau. Among the first changes will be a bill to provide salaries for members of the government.