There’s no urgent need for Barbados to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for balance of payments support or a stand-by arrangement.
And that’s despite facing serious economic challenges directly traceable to the global financial crisis that has had a debilitating impact on Spain, Greece, Portugal, the United States and other countries.
That assurance was given to Barbadians in Washington, DC by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who told them on Sunday afternoon the world was experiencing the most difficult economic period in the past 100 years, even worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it was also true Barbados was feeling the fallout from it, but the country was “holding its own”.
“I rely on the experts in the Ministry of Finance and on my Minister of Finance [Chris Sinckler] and, of course, on my own search and study, independent of any of those sources to guide me on what is going on in the Barbados economy.
“On present indications, I do not think there is any prospect of Barbados having to go to the IMF for the reasons it had to go in 1982 under Tom Adams and for the reasons it had to go in the early 1990s under [Sir Lloyd] Erskine Sandiford,” Stuart said.
Read the full story in today’s DAILY NATION.
