Get big projects moving, says Worrell

Barbados needs to get its big infrastructural projects – like the long-in-coming West Coast Sewage system – up and running a lot quicker.That’s the view of Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados, Dr Delisle Worrell.Efforts to enhance the economy “must be supported, very importantly, by a faster implementation of projects”, Worrell told business and University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus leaders yesterday.He said there were areas where Barbados needed to “get its act together”, including some water projects.He mentioned the West Coast Sewage Project, saying it had been talked about for two decades “and we still don’t have a plan” for it.The project was conceived years ago as one way to dispose of West Coast sewage so as not to pose a threat to reefs and other elements of the marine environment.The ideas had been refined in recent years but the project remained on the drawing board.Worrell made his comments at the opening of a meeting of business and academia leaders, billed  the CEO Forum – Building The New Barbados Economy: Strategies For The 21st Century, at the UWI’s CARICOM Research Building.Pro-vice chancellor and principal of the Cave Hill Campus, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, told the gathering that Barbados should “radically diversify” its economy.“The economy has not had a substantive transformation in 20 years,” he said.“The model that we are using is very much the model of the ’70s – this is a ’70s crafted model. I don’t think it is going to take us deeply into this century, aggressively into this century.“We need a new model and we need new engines of growth. We need new areas. Many of the areas, it seems to me, are saturated in terms of their competitive potential and we can only do this on a global scale.”Sir Hilary said the UWI campus had been faced with “the hard reality” that its survival lay in significant change.