The new Government agency established to improve the ease of doing business has made progress, but the real benefits are likely to be seen from the new financial year and onwards.
Business Barbados officer-in-charge Tamiesha Rochester gave that update to the House of Assembly yesterday during debate on the Appropriation Bill, 2026.
“So whilst we have laid that foundation where a lot of it [is] behind the scenes, what you will see in the 2026-2027 year now is the roll-out . . . of our new reinforced systems that allow us to be efficient, to operate quickly, to operate smoothly and not be hampered by the setbacks of using systems that are not fit for purpose,” she said yesterday in response to questions from Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility for Economic Affairs and Planning, Marsha Caddle.
With Minister of Energy, Business Development and Commerce Kerrie Symmonds, and his team, in the Well of the Chamber, Caddle asked about improvements in real deliverables and key indicators such as the time that various processes take, noting this “will allow us to return to being able to measure and report improvement with respect to our competitiveness and productivity”.
Rochester said Business Barbados, whose functions include those previously executed by the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property Office, focused on the use of data and a branch model, which enabled the measurement of client expectations.
She reported some early success, including the fact that wait times for individual customers were now 16 to 21 minutes, down from the previous 45 minutes to an hour.
“For the corporate and trust service providers and the agents with large accounts, or with more complex transactions who would have spent at least 90 minutes to two hours
in some instances, depending on the number of companies they represent, their wait times are now 41 to 60 minutes,” she said.
“We . . . have already processed over 8 000 digital applications for the [financial] year, and hundreds of paper applications that we have had in backlog have been processed during the year as well.”
Rochester said the plan was to “continue to use the data to improve the service, to improve the competitiveness, to show us where we need to make further improvements, and to show us what is working”.
She also reminded that Business Barbados inherited legacy systems no longer fit for purpose and built “for a different time”.
“We spent the last year not only building and strengthening our digital infrastructure, but also reworking or relocating the workflows, deconstructing and reconstructing and all of the various elements that have to come together with a new and improved digital landscape to allow us to be competitive and to remain competitive. Importantly, we’re not structuring or layering these systems on existing, problematic legacy systems,” she said.
“So this work is at a very advanced stage, and we are getting to the stage where we can have that certainty of process and certainty of timelines, supported by systems, supported by legislation and supported by [a] process that make sense in 2026.” (SC)
