WITH OVER $5 MILLION in Heineken and Piton beers being imported from St Lucia each year, now was the time for Barbadians to “make statements with their wallets,” executive director of the Barbados Manufacturers Association (BMA), Bobbi McKay, asserted yesterday.
“The Deputys [the latest brand of beer from Banks Holdings Limited] are doing extremely well, but the fact of the matter is that we want to be seen looking cool and we are paying Value Added Tax (VAT) and National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and all kinds of things for other countries and not for our own.
“And the only thing that will make a change is when Barbadians speak up with their wallets,” McKay told the DAILY?NATION in an interview, following the launch of the Barbados Manufacturers Expo (BMEX) at Pureocean in St Lawrence Gap, Christ Church.
She was responding to the reports that a 70 per cent duty could be imposed on imports entering St Lucia from Barbados and other Caribbean islands.
McKay explained that St Lucia and other members of the Organisation of the Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) were seen as Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs), since the early 1970s, but asserted that their economies had changed since then.
“This is no longer 1973. The companies that they are trying to protect are multi-national like Amstel [brewery]. It cannot work, because it is not competitive and they are no longer struggling,” she said.
McKay also asserted that Barbadians were buying, but were shopping overseas.
“They want things from Amazon and from overseas and they think things from overseas are better . . . Maybe they are not shopping in Town but they are still shopping.”
She urged Barbadians to see the local impact of their actions, adding: “ . . . We keep losing jobs in manufacturing because we want to be importing all the time and the service providers are feeling it too.”
(LW)
