Congratulations to VOB and Sagicor for starting the year right by airing a frank discussion on the state of Barbados. Hope it will become a regular feature, because despite Minister Donville Inniss claiming there’s a lot of long talk around, we seldom hear any kind of talk from Government, except perhaps from the minister himself who was rightfully described as the exception rather than the rule. Silence then leads to concerns of lack of transparency and confidence.
I’m glad to hear from Ian DeSouza that his bank is doing well – good to know he’s looking after my “two cents”. One wouldn’t expect banks to suffer, what with all the charges they make on customers and their expenditure cuts (staff-wise) at the expense of customers’ time, but I will say that Republic Bank (even when it was Barbados National Bank) is one of the few banks which calculated interest fairly without any persuasion; that is, on a daily balance. To calculate on minimum monthly or, worse yet, quarterly balance is wrong in my opinion.
It was good too to hear a positive report from Ralph “Bizzy” Williams on his companies but, unfortunately, “one (or two) swallows doth not a summer make”. All our sectors must perform well to pull the country up from the doldrums. If I understood him correctly, Bizzy claimed that while we continue to promote tourism as our mainstay, consumerism (the retail trade) is the largest driver of our economy. We need to change that, since we produce little of what we consume, which results in excessive foreign exchange spending.
To the lady who chastised the media for their “hatchet job”, claiming that they encouraged the feeling of the country “going to the dogs”, let’s just say that over-optimism is equivalent to naivete. Like her, most of us aren’t going anywhere, so we have to face the unsavoury truth and fight to make things better, rather than going into denial.
There are always disagreements as to where the responsibility for our present position lies. Economist Charlie Skeete noted that macroeconomic stability is important to everything, including individual businesses, and that fiscal deficit, high debt and uncertain foreign exchange negatively affect businesses. He went on to say that macroeconomic stability needs to be restored in Barbados so as to achieve growth, prosperity and increased employment, and the measures needed to achieve it, while not pleasant, are necessary.
But we’ve got ourselves in such a bind that, despite the fat pensions and perks allegedly due to our Members of Parliament, I don’t envy their present position one bit. One wonders how they’ll decide which area to try to fix first. Maybe they’ll spin one of those wheels used in televised raffles to see which problem the wheel stops at. Of course, if everyone pulled their weight, several problems could be tackled simultaneously, but will that ever happen?
Concern was expressed about “a crisis in governance” and a lack of confidence. Minister Inniss asked for a definition of confidence. To me, it seems simple – confidence is the feeling that one can rely on someone or something; firm trust. It’s not difficult to give a list of examples where this administration has made public statements, only to change them almost immediately or to retract them altogether.
They need to put more thought into how measures will work, or whether they are fair or logical, before going public. There are also a number of promises which appear to have been broken, plus they have a penchant for dismissing international rating agencies which we all know have considerable influence on Barbados’ ability to obtain credit. All this leads to the lack of confidence that seems to be baffling Minister Inniss.
Another interesting and useful comment came from businessman Andrew Bynoe. He says we’re resting on attributes that have long gone – our institutions, infrastructure, health and educational standards, and labour efficiency, among others. So very true. Only recently a potential investor told me he wouldn’t invest in Barbados because of its crumbling infrastructure.
Finally, every year as I clear my office to make way for the coming year’s clutter, I never cease to be amazed at how many studies have been done (usually at considerable cost), recommendations made, solutions provided, yet we’ve acted on or benefited from few of them.
Dr Frances Chandler is a former Independent senator. Email [email protected]
