Minister of Economic Affairs Dr David Estwick has dismissed as “foolishness” Opposition Leader Mia Mottley’s statement that Barbadians will face harsh economic times over the next six to 12 months.
Estwick told reporters yesterday that the prediction was at odds with what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was saying about the economy and all the local economic indicators.
The economy is not expected to grow this year, but the forecast is that it will not worsen either, Estwick said.
And for next year, things should get better, with a 2-4 per cent growth forecast, he reported.
“The Opposition Leader should read an economics book first before she speaks about economics,” he said. “That is the only thing that I will say to the Opposition Leader on that matter because that (forecast) is foolishness.
“Who are you going to believe [about the state of the economy] – the International Monetary Fund, who has experience in dealing with economies all around the world, morning, noon and night and has a plethora of experts to analyse economic data, [or] the Opposition Leader?”
Estwick made the comments after his ministry launched an economic early warning system at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
He told reporters that the economic growth outlook for the rest of this year remained “reasonably flat”.
However, on the positive side “the index of industrial production looks pretty good” and “there is some evidence that we are not declining at the same rate and tourism is growing right now between two and three percent”, he pointed out.
Another positive was that Barbados had not lost any of the international businesses it had attracted, the minister said.
He described unemployment as “reasonably stable” in the tough economic times, pegging it at 10.6 per cent.
According to Estwick, Barbados should register economic growth of 2.4 per cent for 2011.
This forecast, which is also given by the IMF, is based not only on what is happening with the world economy but “the fact that we are now getting a lot of [tourism] business coming out of Canada, in particular western Canada” as well as projected business from the United states and Latin America, Estwick said.
Addressing the St Michael North East branch of the Barbados Labour Party on Sunday, Mottley said things were going to get worse in the Barbados economy. She indicated this position emerged after her talks with IMF officials.
“What is going to have to come down in this country in the next six to 12 months is going to be so gruesome in terms of adjustment that government as we know it, government as we have come to know it, will not be able to remain the same as we go into the future,” she told the gathering.(TY)