GOVERNMENT HAS TO reverse the policies that have deprived the tourism sector of its ability to make returns for investors, says former Prime Minister Owen Arthur.
And it must start doing so in relation to the skyrocketing utility rates.
Arthur told a Barbados Labour Party (BLP) branch meeting in his St Peter constituency on Sunday that each hotelier had to face Government’s increases in water rates and electricity rates by 60 per cent and 65 per cent, respectively; which might help those entities to make money for the Government but doom the hotelier to failure.
He said there was no way, for instance, that a hotelier could charge a tourist for the water pumped into a swimming pool or for turning on an air-conditioning unit in a hotel room; so in order for the Government to start helping its leading sector, it must reverse those rate policies along with other policies that connect various sectors with tourism.
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