Barbados doesn’t have a debt problem, Central Bank Governor Dr Delisle Worrell told business leaders yesterday.
In a question-and-answer session following a Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) luncheon at Hilton Barbados, Worrell said that what really mattered was the country’s ability to service its foreign debt costs and that debt-to-GDP ratio was not an informative gauge.
“Barbados is not one of those most highly indebted countries in the world,” he told BCCI members, headed by president Lalu Vaswani, executive director Lisa Gale and retiring senior vice president David Neilands.
“We are on par with Germany, we are on par with Canada and we are below the United States. The most highly indebted country in the world in terms of debt-to-GDP ratio is Japan, and Japan does not have a debt problem . . . The debt-to-GDP ratio is not an informative measure.
“What matters in Barbados and in small, open economies is your foreign debt and, more precisely, the servicing costs of your foreign debt. We used to know that. When I was an undergraduate, that’s what we were taught,” Worrell said.
