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Grand Bahamas Chamber head rolls out plans By Inderia Saunders ~ Guardian Business Reporter ~ inderia@nasguard.com A "visionary exercise" is about to be launched by the newly-elected Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce president, who is rolling out concrete plans for 2010, set to examine opportunities and grow the island's business pool. It's a move Peter Turnquest asserts could unlock millions of dollars of sustainable activity and employment for members of Grand Bahama's business community. "Most of the work being done by the Port Authority is being done from an international investor's point of view, looking at major employment and investment opportunities," he told Guardian Business. "But we believe in order for Grand Bahama to get itself out of the up and down cycle we've had over a number of years, we have to somehow strengthen and grow our domestic small business pool. "Thereby creating the employment that will be a little more sustainable going forward and not so much dependent on major investors to come in." The initiative is one that has already been launched, with a three phase approach expected to execute the plan. The Chamber has, in fact, already had very brief, preliminary meetings with the Prime Minister's office in Grand Bahama to see explore where the government was at in relation to the private sector move. Turnquest, however, maintains that he wants the project to remain a private sector led one with partners limited to those in the business community. "From that point of view we have identified some potential partners to help us with this but it's too early at this stage to say who we're going with and how we're going to approach it," he added. "But we have an idea of how it will get done." Already, Turnquest said several economic development specialist were being identified to see what was the best model for Grand Bahama from a domestic point to identify opportunities for local business, thereby expanding in potential areas and encouraging new entrepreneurs to come into the market and fill present gaps. "We have already started the process of becoming development specialist ourselves and trying to determine the best approach," said the president. "The first phase will be the assessment where we are doing some basic training for our board and some of our members in terms of what economic development is and how to go about these kinds of things. "Once we got that, we'll get into the information gathering phase and the what if phase and after that we'll have a report." The end of summer is the date Turnquest hopes to have that training phase completed. Next will be the actual model phase, which he said should be developed either by the end of 2010 or beginning or 2011. Tuesday February 2, 2010