BARBADOS’ ECONOMIC CONDITION may have worsened because the Government didn’t act fast enough to address its financial woes when they emerged.
But Barbados wasn’t alone. According to Standard & Poor’s, the major Wall Street credit rating firm, Jamaica and Belize suffered the same fate from the fallout of the recession that struck Europe and the Caribbean in the first decade of the 21st century.
In essence, hard hit by global economic turmoil, Barbados and its Caribbean neighbours failed to act in a timely fashion by taking tough measures and in the process allowed a bad situation to worsen. Part of the problem too, was political, meaning that governments were keeping their eyes on general elections.
In a paper which assessed the financial problems facing Europe and the Caribbean, a top S&P analyst, Olga Kalina, said that unlike many European states, especially those in the Baltic, which suffered significant damage from the international economic meltdown but moved swiftly to impose tough measures to halt the slide, the governments of Barbados, Jamaica and Belize just didn’t act fast enough.
Read the full story in today’s SATURDAY SUN.
