With Barbados’ unemployment rate reaching 18.5 per cent at the end of 2020, Central Bank Governor Cleviston Haynes says current economic challenges mean that a significant number of Barbadians may remain jobless this year.
However, he stressed yesterday that it was “difficult to say where unemployment will go, because it all depends on how protracted these lockdowns are, [and] how long it takes before we are able to see some recovery in the tourist sector”.
Haynes was fielding questions during the Central Bank’s virtual review of Barbados’ economic performance last year.
About 37 000 Barbadians, mainly from the tourism sector, received about $155 million in unemployment benefits from the National Insurance Scheme after that sector collapsed in March.
READ: Economic recovery slowed by COVID
Haynes said the hope was that once tourism revived, along with its related benefits to other sectors, employment would increase. (SC)
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