The Christmas season has come and gone, the glad tidings of hope, cheer, comfort and joy have been offered, plus warnings about the Herods of this world, whoever they are. Hopefulness is a wonderful attribute born of faith. Hopelessness is an awful prospect.
Never seek to diminish anyone’s faith no matter how blind and ostensibly delusional it might seem to the sceptic. In one of my ideological mutations, I saw myself as a “secular humanist”. The humanist places great store on man as the agent of his own destiny, the Christian humanist might add, with God’s Grace and guidance.
Prayer might work, but God helps those who help themselves. To pray and then do nothing is a kind of spiritual indolence.
2015 will be a decisive year for Barbados after seven years of economic decline or stagnation. The economic imperatives will to a large extent determine how our society survives. It is evident that the financial problems may already be eating away at the social infrastructure and the standard of living of many Barbadians.
Last year, we witnessed the pile-up of garbage due to a lack of units for collection of waste. Add to that, three hours waits in the Fairchild Street Bus terminal, a complex road network in need of repair and the prospect of increasing public dependence on Welfare services at a time when funds are scarce.
Horrendous stories of shortages of medical materials and the unavailability of equipment at the QEH in circumstances that could affect life chances. Happily, police data suggests no serious rise in the crime rate, even though the use of firearms is a real concern. Speaking at Leonard’s Church in New York in June 2014, Ms Mia Mottley agreed that crime is not rampant across the Barbadian landscape.
Dr Don Marshall may be right in suggesting that Barbadians are beginning to experience what he calls “adjustment fatigue”. We are not quite sure where we stand given the divergence between the apostles of hope and the prophets of doom. In his December 18 column, Clyde Mascoll concluded: “It’s all in the optics.” Which optical illusion do you buy into? The Ministerial statement of the Minister of Finance in December was as expected a hopeful expression of the present and the immediate future, but haven’t we heard that all before?
Then there are the contrary options, to go to the IMF or stick with a home-grown formula that has up to now underperformed. The much hoped for notion of 2 per cent growth in the economy this year is now projected at a negligible 0.3 per cent.
Then there is the prospect of regime change; 2018 seeming so far away. But then all the BLP offers is a “negative ambiguity” to what the DLP is doing but ambiguous on the details of its own policies. On both sides there are question marks against the leadership as indeed there are about the quality of the entire so-called political class.
Certainly there are economic prospects that are trending upward, mostly in the tourism sector. Many of the proceeds of these projections are in the medium to distant future, never ignoring the bugbears of implementation deficiency and mercurial investor confidence.
Upwardly trending is the fact that the Government is to sign an agreement with BHP Billiton for oil and gas exploration. There has apparently been some success in the fiscal consolidation within certain state agencies and some closing of the fiscal shortfall due for completion by March 31 this year.
We still need to effect economies of some $32 million to get close to the reduction target. The foreign reserves cover seems healthy at 14 months of import cover, but at a time when the economy is growing at a very marginal rate if at all, the national debt remains excessive and the cost of its servicing onerously high. With successive downgrades the cost of borrowing for development has become painfully prohibitive.
The difficulties in Barbados go beyond the economic and are unlikely to be solved by any single increase in tourism receipts or an upsurge in direct foreign investment.
There are some long-term and structural issues to be resolved. In making the second tranche of a proposed $130 million grant to Barbados, the EU has stressed contingency on Barbados fulfilling certain requirements.
Some adjustment appears doable, but aspects such as increasing productivity, reform of the public service including improved public finance management for oversight and transparency are problematic.
Proposed fiscal responsibility legislation is a good idea, but for now that’s all it is, an idea devoutly to be wished. In Barbados, ameliorative proposals tend to run up against obstacles deeply embedded in the social and political culture.
Fundamentally the level of social discipline in Barbados, as in much of the Caribbean, is too low to sustain significantly high levels of meaningful development. If economies continue to stagnate and social decay worsens, the post-colonial project could be irrevocably imperilled.
• Ralph Jemmott is a retired educator and social commentator. Email [email protected]
