Barbados should brace itself for another downgrade by the international rating agencies before year-end.
That prediction is coming from president of the Barbados Economic Society, Jeremy Stephen, who was a panellist at a discussion for International Business Week at the Grande Salle, Central Bank, on Tuesday night on the topic Thriving In Crisis.
“I said it earlier this year that two would come, and another one would definitely come, just given the environment that we are in,” he forecast.
Stephen has been saying for some time that there was a “reluctance” by the Government to change, when the economic crisis started in 2008, and then it moved too late with its responses.
“The Minister of Finance, no offence to him, has always been right at the wrong time. I’m being blunt about it, but it’s just that the policies have been right, but they’ve been far too late. With that in mind, we’ve reached a situation where drastic remedies will have to be taken on both the on-shore side of the country and off-side,” he stated.
He said the on-shore side would be things like the increase in the National Social Responsibility Levy and the effects on local businesses, and getting access to foreign exchange.
Stephen, who had some of his students from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill in the audience, said one of the “easy” solutions could have been “something as controversial as basically rescheduling your debt” back in 2012. He said that would have put the country on a road to recovery on the debt profile by now.
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