The?Government has been warned that it must stop printing excess money or face the likelihood of ending up on the same tragic economic path as Jamaica and Guyana, which have faced almost irrecoverable currency devaluations.
The caution has come from former Prime Minister Owen Arthur who, in delivering the first Independence lecture of the School of Politics yesterday, told Barbadians that the Central Bank had printed $370 million to purchase Government Treasury Bills, which had caused the country’s foreign exchange reserves to plunge.
“The printing of money on this scale to accommodate Government’s fiscal deficit is the chief factor which has triggered the dramatic plunge downward in the country’s foreign exchange reserves.
“If this plunge is not immediately checked, the economic affairs of Barbados will enter a new and very dangerous territory,” he warned, adding that much of the economic and social problems of Guyana and Jamaica had been tied to excessive increases in money supply and inflation.
