Barbados is hoping to attract more investment from its nationals living abroad, using a special national development bond and other financial instruments with attractive rates of return.
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who made the disclosure yesterday, indicated that some of the funds would be used as a cushion for new businesses in need of investment financing.
“The goal is to raise foreign exchange capital from Barbadians resident abroad and from external holdings of residents of Barbados and to leverage these resources to support local economic development initiatives,” Stuart said at the opening of the third Diaspora Conference at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
“This would be done through a series of initiatives that include more effective marketing and the provision of Government guarantees of safe, reliable and attractive rates of return.”
The instruments, including a Barbados National Development (NetWorker) Bond, were still being designed, according to Stuart. The details are to be discussed at the conference, which concludes tomorrow.
Stuart told the conference that has attracted Barbadians and descendants of Barbadians from the United States, Canada, England, Panama and Cuba, that Government had been pondering “how best we can help” new businesses in need of financing, against the backdrop of the high failure rates of micro and small enterprises.
“We have been giving considerable thought to the creation of financial instruments that are attractive to [Barbadians] at home and abroad and which would lead to greater uptake of instruments issued by the Government,” he said.
He urged Barbadians living abroad to consider investing in the big annual Crop Over Festival, whether in the provision of goods or services.
“Now is a good time to invest in Barbados and help entrepreneurs to link Barbados to its Diaspora in mutually beneficial ways and in so doing create employment and also create wealth.”
He said Barbados needed a “positive response” from the Diaspora, telling the conference it was generally believed that the Barbados economic downturn and the changes it had triggered offered enterprising Barbadians at home and abroad several “pathways to prosperity”.
According to him, the “No. 1 priority” was to get Barbadians living abroad more involved in the economic development of their country.
He told Barbadians who came in for the conference to “take a leaf” out of the book of previous waves of migrants from Barbados.
He said the thousands of Barbadians who migrated to work on the Panama Canal in the early 1900s had sent significant sums of money home to their families, helping to transform the society.
Similarly, the remittances from North America and Britain had for years been bolstering the economy, he noted.
“This is now your time, and you know what the challenge is.”
