It now seems that recent budgetary policy in the past two years reduced economic activity and taxes collected. – Editorial Sunday Sun July 18The media are saying it. The private sector is saying it. Men in rum shops are saying it. Women buying their weekly groceries are saying it. Democratic Labour Party supporters are saying it. Barbados Labour Party supporters are saying it. Even the Central Bank is saying it.The DLP’s economic policies are a failure! They have succeeded in sucking the life out of the economy. Worse still they are terrible money managers. They spent $182 million dollars more on day-to-day expenses than they earned in the first six months of the year. Even the lowliest huckster with a tray in the market knows that if she spends more than she sells trouble will soon come a-calling. No manager in the private sector would keep his job for long if he ran his company this way.The Government keeps ducking and hiding behind the world recession. They refuse to accept or admit that their policies have had a deleterious effect on the domestic economy.Over the last two-and-a-half years they made and are making no effort to restructure the sugar industry, manufacturing, the hospitality industry or the financial services sector to be leaner, more competitive earners of foreign exchange.There are either unqualified or lack the political will to bring the current account deficit under control. They continue to borrow to fund day to day expenses. The bubble is going to burst sooner or later and we all know that the International Monetary Fund medicine will be a bitter pill to swallow.And worse than any of this they refuse to explain the precarious position of the country’s finances today or the dangers that lie ahead. And the dangers are very real and looming ever closer. It is contemptuous of the majority of Barbadians who voted them into office two and a half years ago.The rub is that a blind man on a trotting horse could see this coming. Our leader Mia Mottley certainly did. She warned them that their tax grab Budget of 2008 was the wrong policy for the times and would strangle any potential for growth in the economy. She told them that their revenue projections a year later were underestimated and that they should review their expenditure.
They continued to run the country like they had run their election campaign on a wave of public relations, false assurances, impractical solutions and just plain bad economic policy.Miss Mottley has pledged to engage the country in a series of talks to identify the way forward sector by sector. It is important for Barbadians to understand that there are workable solutions available even if your present Government does not have any.It is important that the hopelessness that has engulfed the halls of Government does not permeate to the wider society. This would be contagion of a different kind with equally disastrous consequences.Our sometime acting, Prime Minister Ronald Jones says they will not be rushed into making incorrect decisions. The evidence suggests that they are quite capable of doing this all on their own, slowly or hurriedly.We wonder how this approach is working for you, Mr Jones. You have a captive audience that is growing impatient with the silence of your Government on matters that will affect how they live next year and the year after that. For goodness sake, the time to act and to explain your plan was yesterday.Perhaps the Government should recall the House and have an open debate on the economy. It is clear they need help.•Beresford Leon Padmore is a pseudonym for the Barbados Labour Party.
