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This is our favorite time of the year, where it feels like every other week there is some holiday and a long weekend to look forward to.

Maybe they were on to something with the whole “it’s better in The Bahamas” thing.

Let's get into it.

A new report from the Inter-American Development Bank just put a number on what every Bahamian already knows in their bones: we pay way too much for electricity.

The IDB's first quarterly Caribbean bulletin for 2026 found that the average Bahamian household spends roughly $4,800 a year on electricity — five times the Latin American and Caribbean average. For the poorest households, electricity eats up 7.3% of income, well above the 6% threshold that officially qualifies as a "high energy burden."

The report is also careful to note that high oil prices aren't the whole story. BPL's inefficiencies run deep enough that even when global energy costs ease, Bahamians don't feel it the way they should.

What's actually broken?

Quite a bit, according to the IDB. BPL is currently running at 24% operating losses. Its debt service coverage ratio, a measure of whether a company can pay its debts, was -2.5 in the last fiscal year. That's not a typo. The utility that powers the entire country cannot cover its own debt obligations.

On top of that, the national grid loses more than 10% of electricity before it even reaches your home. The system also lacks what engineers call "N-1 redundancy," which is a technical way of saying that if one major component fails, the whole thing is at risk. Anyone who’s current has ever cut off knows this isn't theoretical.

Here's something most people don't know. Generating electricity on the Family Islands costs significantly more than on New Providence, but every Bahamian pays the same rate regardless of where they live. To make that work, BPL absorbs the difference, to the tune of roughly $50 million a year. That cost gets spread across the whole system, meaning Nassau customers are partially subsidising the electricity bills of people in Abaco, Exuma, and everywhere else. That arrangement is now being wound down under the current government's reforms.

BPL is legally required to submit a new tariff review to its regulator URCA by 2027. Industry sources, speaking off the record, are saying that review is likely to come with a base rate increase, and potentially the end of the free first 200 kilowatt hours that low-income households currently receive every month.

The government has pointed to that free 200 KWh as a major win for ordinary Bahamians. The IDB is gently noting that it's only sustainable if BPL's underlying costs come down first. Right now, they haven't.

The reform plan, and the catch.

The government's energy overhaul, LNG-solar hybrid microgrids on the Family Islands, a 20-megawatt solar facility at Blue Hills, private sector power purchase agreements, is projected to eventually save BPL customers up to $170 million annually. The IDB doesn't dispute that. Eleuthera and Abaco broke ground on hybrid microgrids in April 2026. The Blue Hills solar project is expected to be completed by 2027.

But the IDB is clear: none of that saves you money if BPL collapses financially before the reforms are complete. And BPL's weak balance sheet is already slowing the pace of implementation.

The bottom line.

The energy reforms are real and they're moving. But BPL is being asked to run a marathon with a broken leg. Until the utility's finances are stabilised, every promise of cheaper electricity comes with an asterisk.

Ok ok back to the math stuff. Seem’s like a lot of y’all think y’all good at this.

A rectangle has a length that is 4 cm longer than its width. If its area is 96 cm², what are its dimensions?

A) 8 cm × 12 cm
B) 6 cm × 16 cm
C) 12 cm × 16 cm
D) 4 cm × 24 cm

Check the bottom of the newsletter for the answer.

The Bahamas Cannabis Authority is weeks away from launching its licensing platform and rolling out the country's medicinal cannabis industry. There's just one problem nobody seems to have fully figured out yet: where these businesses are going to keep their money.

Clearing Banks Association chairman Gowon Bowe laid it out plainly this week. The Bahamian banking system runs on U.S. correspondent banks. Citibank, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. Those institutions prohibit transactions with any financial institution that banks cannabis-related businesses, because marijuana remains federally illegal in the United States regardless of what individual states, or other countries, have decided to do about it.

That creates a problem with no easy workaround. Unlike Canada, which has its own globally traded currency and can route transactions without touching the U.S. dollar system, The Bahamas runs almost entirely on USD for international commerce. The Bahamian dollar doesn't leave these shores. Every wire transfer, every card payment, every import transaction flows through American correspondent banks. Ring-fencing cannabis businesses from that system, Bowe says, is effectively impossible.

Jamaica legalised cannabis and ran into the same wall. Most of its industry remains cash-based to this day, which creates its own problems: businesses sitting on large amounts of physical cash are attractive targets.

Bowe says there have been no formal discussions between the banking sector and policymakers about how any of this actually gets resolved. The working assumption appears to be that once the legal framework exists, the banks will figure it out. Bowe's message is basically it doesn't work that way.

Alternative options exist on paper, including European banks and credit unions, but those institutions have their own correspondent relationships to protect and may not be willing to take the risk.

🏦 Your NIB contributions are changing. Workers earning above $810 a week will see about $4 more deducted monthly from July 1. Pensioners get a 1.5% bump… the minimum pension moves from $364 to roughly $369 a month.

🔥 The FNM is figuring itself out. The party voted to delay its constitutionally due convention until next year, drawing criticism from members expecting a leadership reset. Chairman Gowon Sands says he won't seek re-election. Michael Pintard hasn't said what he's doing yet.

🦞 Washington is coming for Bahamian lobster. The US Trade Representative named The Bahamas among 54 countries failing to ban goods made with forced labour. A 12.5% tariff on Bahamian exports could follow, with $30m worth of spiny lobster exports directly in the crosshairs.

🤖 Bahari used AI models… that was their first mistake. The Bahamian apparel brand used AI-generated models for its Coral World collection and caught heat for it. Management says it was a creative choice tied to the theme, and that Bahamian models remain the norm for their shoots. The Facebook warriors say they ain’t going for that.

🏨 Baha Mar is on a roll. March occupancy hit 95%. Canadian bookings are up 40%. The $700m expansion is on track for a late 2029 opening. President Graeme Davis says summer is looking well ahead of last year's pace.

📉 Bitcoin is having a rough one. Bitcoin dropped to a four-month low of around $61,000 this week, down from nearly $74,000 on Monday. The trigger: Strategy, the world's largest corporate bitcoin holder, sold some of its holdings for only the second time ever — spooking the market.

🌏 Major earthquake hits the Philippines. A strong earthquake struck the southern Philippine island of Mindanao this week, triggering tsunami warnings across Indonesia, the Philippines, Palau, Taiwan and Papua New Guinea. Philippine President Marcos Jr. suspended classes across affected areas and ordered emergency response agencies to act immediately.

🤖 Anthropic filed to go public. The company behind AI assistant Claude filed a confidential IPO prospectus with the SEC this week. Anthropic was recently valued at $965 billion after raising $65 billion — putting it ahead of rival OpenAI, which is also planning a public listing but hasn't filed yet.

🇨🇴 Colombia heads to a runoff. A first-round presidential election in Colombia ended in a near-dead heat. Tough-on-crime newcomer Abelardo de la Espriella leads with 44% against progressive senator Iván Cepeda's 41%. The two face off in a runoff later this month, with Latin America's rightward shift very much on display.

Travelled thousands of miles. Cleared multiple airports. Made it all the way to Nassau. Still couldn't get in.

The Bay Street Brief, on the other hand, is already in your inbox. And unlike Ebola, we encourage you to spread this thing around. Forward it. Share it. Send it to the group chat. The more people that catch it, the better.

Symptoms include: being informed, sounding smart at dinner, and forwarding it to at least five people you know.

No vaccine exists. Bahamian Health Officials are not concerned.

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A) 8 cm × 12 cm

If you got this wrong, don't worry. At least nobody asked you to balance a national budget. 😄

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Until next time.

— The Bay Street Brief Team