As elusive a concept as competitiveness is, no right-thinking person could deny that Barbados is frantically in need of a significant drive to enhance competitiveness at all levels of society. Indeed, as implied, competitiveness can be viewed from several dimensions.
At the individual level, competitiveness is characterized in economics literature as “an aggressive willingness to compete”. At the level of a firm or company, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Britain, describes competitiveness as “the ability to consistently and profitably deliver products and services which customers are willing to purchase in preference to those of competitors”.
And, in relation to the most controversial of all – the competitiveness of a country – the World Competitiveness Yearbook offers this definition: “Competitiveness of nations is a field of economic knowledge which analyzes the facts and policies that shape the ability of a nation to create and maintain an environment that sustains more value creation for its enterprises and more prosperity for its people.”
Notwithstanding the challenges associated with the conceptualization of competitiveness, individuals, companies, industries, sectors, and countries do compete at different levels and at varying times on massive scales – none more shimmering than the burning desire to expand and diversify export structures.
But clearly, increasing exports from one year to another is one thing; doing so on a sustained basis is quite another challenge in itself. Indeed, fulfilment of the latter goal means that those engaged in exporting must prove themselves to be winners on a consistent basis.
And winning is precisely what underpins competitiveness. On that basis alone, I wish to pose this question: does Barbados need to become a winner? No doubt, I will be the first to answer this question in the affirmative and unquestionably without any shilly-shallying whatsoever.
Undeniably, the troubling economic report presented recently by the Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados should be a wake-up call and eye-opener for all who might have been cynical about the kind of analysis I have been espousing in relation to the Barbadian economy for many months.
More important, said report on the economy should convince us all that Barbados must return to its winning ways sooner rather than later by boosting exports, reducing imports, lowering the level of debt and fiscal deficit on the current account, creating employment opportunities for those willing and able to work, and developing an attractive environment for supporting expansion in foreign direct investment.
Anything short of returning this country to its winning ways would spell doom on the economic front – a phenomenon no citizen or resident of Barbados can afford now or in the future.
As insurmountable as the task of reconfiguring the Barbadian economy to put it back on a sustained growth and development path may appear, we all could take some comfort in the knowledge that those charged with the responsibility of leading the country do in fact appreciate the need to enhance competitiveness within the domestic economy.
One of the resolutions adopted as part of the Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals for 2011 clearly confirms this affirmation.
It is therefore high time we all, as well-meaning nationals of this country, begin “to put our money where our mouth is” and work together to return Barbados to its winning ways through enhanced competitiveness.
