EARLIER THIS YEAR the nation’s reputation as a business-friendly jurisdiction came under the spotlight when the World Bank issued its annual report on Doing Business, which lowered the country’s ranking.
This report, which scored the country on a number of objective criteria, including how easy it is to start a business, obtain construction permits, acquire electricity, register a property, get credit, trade across borders, enforce contracts and protect minority investors, ranked Barbados’ performance against its neighbours as well as other jurisdictions.
Now we juxtapose this against other factors that are more likely to be considered by the average citizen: the length of time one has to stand in a commercial bank to transact everyday business; time spent tied up in traffic just to move a few kilometres; the frustration imposed by a poorly functioning public transport system; the number of productive hours lost trying to obtain a police certificate of character; how long it takes to clear cargo from the Bridgetown Port; the length of time it takes police to respond to a simple traffic accident and then the years it can take to obtain the accident report.
Of course, high on the list also would have to be the pace at which matters pass through the judicial system.
Taken together, these things do not point to a country where maximising efficiency is a national priority. But perhaps we have reached this stage because our modus operandi of late does not suggest that when dealing with these types of matters we take a macro or global approach.
It is not, for example, a simple matter of the Transport Board running a poor service forcing commuters to spend long periods in bus terminals and at bus stops. It is about how we need to measure the volume of national productivity that is lost. When the average commuter leaves home at 6 a.m. to get to work at 8 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. and does not get back home until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. on journeys that should at worst take no more than 20 or 25 minutes the loss of productivity at the national level ought not to be ignored.
And it is not just the public sector. Standing in a bank for an hour or an hour and a half in the middle of the day to obtain some service that effectively takes no more than five to ten minutes; or attending a doctor who schedules five appointments at the same time, forcing patients to wait as long as two hours, as is the norm, does not give the impression we are seriously measuring lost productivity.
Again, we miss the boat because we do not see these together as a major blight on our national productivity, particularly at a time when achieving the highest level of efficiency in whatever we do should be at the top of our agenda. We believe it is time to take a fresh look at our National Initiative for Service Excellence, given our economic challenges, and at the same time recognise that public sector reform means very little if it is viewed by public officers and those who call on them for services merely as a programme to make those paid from the public purse more polite.
In too many areas we have slipped, and continue to slip, and this erosion needs to be quantified in dollars so that every Barbadian can understand and appreciate the scale of the task ahead.