The price of land in Barbados is too high.
This view was expressed by prominent Barbadian businessman and entrepreneur Ralph “Bizzy” Williams, who told a banking seminar yesterday the high price of land was “stymying the development of the country”.
“When you have to pay such a high price for basic land in order to do a development, you cannot make the development viable,” Williams said at a Barbados National Bank (BNB) seminar.
The businessman charged that exhorbitant land prices were beyond the reach of young married couples who though both employed “still cannot afford to buy a piece of land to put a little house on”.
He argued “the only thing that will bring down the price is supply”.
According to Williams, Barbados has more than 8 000 acres of land zoned for agriculture that “nothing is being grown on [it] and [there is] no possibility to develop it or to do anything else with it because that is the rule”.
“Instead of the Government blocking the alternative uses of agricultural land, we need to designate the most fertile agricultural land for food production and provide incentives for people who come up with ideas to use the rest of the land for productive means that will earn foreign exchange or create employment or create activity in the economy.”
Williams said Barbadians should not “quarrel with the Trinidadians when they are able to buy land cheaper in Trinidad, put up a factory and manufacture something and sell it to us and create employment in Trinidad”.
