WE DO NOT HAVE to agree with a single utterance Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler at his press conference on Monday, to hand him deserved kudos.
In the prevailing environment where decisions of the government are shrouded in silence, with the exception of big-time promises of exciting new projects, massive job creation and great inflows of foreign exchange, Sinckler’s news conference was a welcome step in the direction of frankness and transparency.
Following two weeks of “wars and rumours of wars” over his intended decision to dismiss the Governor of the Central Bank, Dr DeLisle Worrell, the minister invited members of the media to government headquarters to share with the public his own reading of the economic picture before panic buttons were pressed over Dr Worrell’s departure.
Given that he will introduce to the House of Assembly the annual Estimates of Expenditure in two weeks’ time, Sinckler could have awaited that prime opportunity to quell publicly expressed fears about the state of the economy. Instead, cognisant of the debilitating impact any level of protracted noise can have on confidence and stability, he spoke up.
Oh that others around him would follow suit.
Apart from the kudos Sinckler justifiably earned for his sensitivity to the need for forthright accounting through an enlightened communication strategy, he may not have scored high marks among the legion of his economics fault-finders, who, with lips of disdain, and, to use a common word, disgust, in their bulging eyes of contempt, decry him.
Given Sinckler’s record of vain assurances since he took over the ministry of finance, it is no wonder that the experts are sceptical about his insistence that Barbados will not be found begging on the steps of the International Monetary Fund and that the country’s dollar will not be devalued.
As one example, it has been tediously long that he has been tinkering with the concept of merging or eliminating statutory agencies in order to reduce the level of transfers from government to these corporations, a factor identified as significant to the lessening of the deficit on current account.
Having given his own spin on the state of the economy, and made bold declarations that are meant to assure citizens that his hand is fully on the wheel and that he knows where he is taking the country, he must use what is possibly his last best chance, the Estimates debate, to wring in the changes that are necessary. That would mean substantial cuts in expenditure.
This will undoubtedly be the last Estimates Minister Sinckler will present in this cycle of his party’s administration, as February 21, 2017 represented the fourth anniversary of the Democratic Labour Party’s nail-biting general elections victory.
He had better make it count for he has expended every ounce of his personal political capital in the last eight years. None of his colleagues, and certainly not the Prime Minister, has had to take the brunt of blame for the country’s economic decline as he has.
This calendar year does not have enough days left to afford Sinckler time to witness the vaunted benefits of his home-grown austerity measures, but he can have one final chance to do the right thing for his country.
History waits to be witness of either courage or cowardice.