The country’s growth forecast for 2024 remains projected in the low two percent range, according to Central Bank Governor John Rolle.
Governor Rolle noted during a press conference for the regulator’s Monthly Economic and Financial Report for June: “Based on the latest data through the first half of 2024, the Bahamian economy continued to expand at a healthy pace. Although the speed of growth has moderated since the completion of the recovery from the pandemic, activity remained slightly accelerated in comparison to the economy’s expected medium-term potential. This reflects strong tourism gains, including in the most important stopover segment, and sustained foreign investment inflows—still significantly targeting tourism developments and residential real estate.”
When asked about the country’s economic projections, Governor Rolle noted: “The forecasts I have seen in various worksheets have the projected growth for 2024 under three percent, in the low two percent range. The upside potential depends on how you can optimize the performance in the tourism sector, where in parts of the sector there is still some room for uplift. That is very important to stress in terms of what the 2024 outlook will resemble.”
Official data provided by the Ministry of Tourism showed that total visitor arrivals strengthened to 0.90 million in May, compared to 0.76 million in the same period in 2023. Contributing to this outturn, the dominant sea segment expanded to 0.74 million visitors, compared to 0.61 million a year earlier. Additionally, the high-value air segment rose to 0.16 million visitors from 0.15 million passengers last year. On a year-to-date basis, total arrivals expanded by 13.5 percent to 4.8 million visitors, compared to the same period in 2023. Sea and air arrivals rose by 15.7 percent and 3.9 percent to 4 million and 0.8 million, respectively, supported by growth across all major market segments.
Regarding the short-term vacation rental market, data provided by AirDNA revealed that during June, total room nights sold increased by 7.8 percent to 61,195, compared to the same period last year. However, occupancy rates for entire place listings decreased to 56.8 percent from 59.2 percent in the prior year, and for hotel-comparable listings to 47.5 percent from 48.5 percent in 2023.