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News report: Chamber looking at trade diversification with China

  • BCCEC
  • 4 hours ago
  • 2 min read

Published by Youri Kemp, The Nassau Guardian, August 26, 2025

Dr. Leo Rolle, executive director of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers’ Confederation (BCCEC), said yesterday that Bahamian businesses are seeing the benefits of trade diversification away from North America and are already creating more diversification opportunities after a recent trade mission to The People’s Republic of China over the past two weeks.


“When we were actually there (in China), we were already creating those opportunities, especially from a manufacturing, an AI and tech standpoint, where we were looking at businesses within our threshold to determine who we can link with those companies that we met with,” said Rolle, who appeared as a guest on the Guardian Radio talk show “Morning Blend” with host Dwight Strachan.


Rolle was accompanied on his trip by a representative from the Consumer Protection Commission (CPC), the Bahamas Development Bank (BDB), and the Bahamas Trade Commission.


Rolle added: “So we were getting names, we were getting numbers, we were getting contacts, we were linking with the procurement of those companies, because we have a lot of members who have always been interested in getting to China and seeing specifically what is there, what the opportunities are.”


It was reported that The Bahamas trade with China more than doubled by November 2024 to $1.24 billion.


China is continuing its focus on Latin America, with the International Monetary Fund saying that in 2019, Latin America and the Caribbean attracted $6.4 billion in foreign direct investment from China, accounting for five percent of China’s total outward FDI.


Specifically, $4.3 billion of that amount was registered as outflows to offshore financial centers such as the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and The Bahamas.


Dave Munroe, managing director of the BDB, said: “Because of the bilingual relations, I immediately can now go to my clients at the BDB, particularly based on the persons we would have met in China, and create those linkages – whether you’re in the green space, whether you’re in orange space, whether you’re in shipping, whether you’re in trade. We now have the ability – directly – to really go to our clients, and we have the network to directly meet our clients where they need to be, and we do reduce costs on time consumer.”


Randy Rolle, executive chairman of the CPC, also said that the important reason why the CPC was on this recent China trade mission for SME’s (small, medium-sized enterprises) was to take a look at some of the products that Chinese companies had to offer and see how they are and find ways to get them into the country.


“We want it to be credible, and I think with us building on these relationships in this collaboration, in working with the BCCEC, and the other areas, we’re able to express our concerns, not on the back end when a consumer has been disenfranchised, but at the beginning and the front end.”



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