The cooperative movement stands ready to help transform Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley’s vision of enfranchising Barbadians, through ownership of national infrastructure to improve the delivery of services including water, energy and transportation, into reality.
That is the submission of chartered accountant Oriel Doyle, who is a senior adviser to the Co-operative Investment Fund Ltd (CIF) and the Barbados Co-operative Business Association (BCBA).
Doyle is confident that the cooperative model is best placed to deliver on the enfranchisement objective”, but he believes Government has a critical enabling role to play and has made several recommendations on how it can do so.
The credit union stalwart outlined his proposals in a document titled The People’s Share: How The Co-operative Model Can Deliver The Enfranchisement Barbadians Deserve.
“Prime Minister Mottley has articulated a vision of an economy in which ordinary Bajans are not spectators to growth but participants in it – not consumers of infrastructure but owners of it. That vision is just. It is economically sound. And it is urgently needed,” Doyle said.
“The co-operative model does not need to be invented to meet this moment. It already exists, already operates, and already serves hundreds of thousands of Barbadians through their credit unions, their co-operative societies, and their investment funds. “What is needed now is the collective determination – of Government, of the co-operative sector, and of Barbadian civil society – to scale it to the challenge.
The people’s share is not a slogan. It is a structure. And that structure has a name: the co-operative.”
Clear investment pathway
He made the following recommendations for Government to help the cooperative movement deliver the transformation that was needed: Amend the regulatory framework to create a clear investment pathway for co-operative societies and credit unions into nationally significant infrastructure projects, with appropriate oversight by the Financial Services Commission.
Introduce tax incentives for co-operative investment in approved infrastructure – recognising that the return on such investment flows back to community members rather than offshore shareholders.
Establish a Co-operative Development Fund, seeded with Government capital and managed jointly with the BCBA, to provide concessional financing to new co-operative enterprises in priority sectors.
Designate co-operative ownership as the preferred structure for all future nationally significant special purpose vehicles (SPV), with commercial and private structures required to demonstrate why co-operative ownership is not feasible.
Adequately resource the Registrar of Co-operative Societies to support the incorporation, governance, and regulatory compliance of a new generation of co-operative enterprises.
Proven vehicle
Doyle is proposing a co-operative enfranchisement framework for Barbados centred on member ownership, member control, and return proportional to participation.
“Co-operatives are not a romantic ideal imported from elsewhere. They are a proven vehicle for exactly the kind of economic enfranchisement Barbados now requires. The question is how to deploy them at scale and with the institutional confidence the moment demands,” he noted.
Asserting that Barbados “currently faces a fiscal and structural challenge that limits the scope of direct Government ownership of infrastructure”, Doyle advised that “by mobilising private member capital – the savings, pension contributions, and share subscriptions of ordinary Barbadians – infrastructure can be capitalised without placing the full burden on the Treasury”.
“The investment becomes community capital rather than public debt. The Government retains a facilitating and regulatory role without carrying the asset on the sovereign balance sheet,” he explained.
“This is not theoretical. The CIF, established under the laws of Barbados, already operates as a vehicle through which registered co-operative societies pool capital for investment in projects too large for any single credit union or society to finance alone. “CIF represents the institutional nucleus around which a national co-operative enfranchisement framework can be constructed.”
He detailed a co-operative SPV that was capable of owning and operating industrial-scale battery storage on behalf of all Barbadians, including: Incorporation of a battery storage cooperative, or cooperatively owned SPV), under the Cooperative Societies Act, with membership open to all Barbadian residents.
Citizens subscribe for shares at an accessible minimum, possibly $500 per household, with credit unions and co-operative societies holding larger institutional tranches on behalf of their members.
The cooperative borrows the balance of the capital required from development finance institutions or commercial lenders, secured against contracted revenues from electricity sales to the grid.
Surplus earnings are returned to members as dividends proportional to their shareholding, with a portion retained for reinvestment in expanded storage capacity.
Governance is democratic: one member, one vote, with an elected board accountable to the membership rather than to a shareholder seeking maximum profit extraction.
He also proposed a water cooperative or cooperatively structured Barbados Water Authority investment fund that would “allow household water customers to convert a portion of their annual rate payments into equity shares”.
“Over time, as the infrastructure generates surplus, those shares pay a dividend that partially offsets the cost of the service itself. The more Bajans invest, the lower the effective net cost of their water supply. Ownership and affordability reinforce each other,” Doyle said.
On public transportation, he shared: “A consortium led by the CIF, the BCBA, and the Association of Public Transport Operators has already proposed the transformation of the Transport Board into the Barbados National Transport Co-operative – a democratically governed, nationally owned transport enterprise in which drivers, workers, and commuter communities all hold a stake.” (SC)
