BLP LEGACY: passing of hotel aids legislation to assist the development of the tourist industry; promotion of family planning and birth control programmes.
The shocking news that the highly respected Moody’s rating agency has downgraded Barbados to near “junk bond status” sent a disturbing chill down the national backbone.
For in international economics and finance, there are few words regarded with greater fear and alarm than “junk bond status”, because of the ominous implications they carry for a nation’s image abroad and the well-being of its people at home.
That’s because from henceforth, Barbados will for the first time be viewed and treated like a near economic leper by the outside world, while the confidence of its citizens in their future will be badly undermined in a way never seen before.
Moody’s outlook on the economy has been downgraded as well, to the level of “negative”.
Thus, Barbados has been dealt a double whammy of body blows that underlines a deep and strong lack of confidence in our present economic managers headed by Chris (“Unclear”) Sinckler, Finance Minister and Dr Delisle Worrell, Central Bank Governor.
So that Moody’s has now caught up with and publicly expressed what renowned and experienced economist and former Finance Minister Owen Arthur has been saying for a long time, namely that the policies of Sinckler and Worrell were dead wrong and would lead to exactly the sorry position in which we have now found ourselves.
Now, it is clear that the statistical tinkering and manipulation by the Central Bank and Ministry of Finance to try to show an economic “spurt”, was nothing more than naked, shameless politicking and economic posturing.
Sooner rather than later, the chickens had to come home to roost and now they have with a thundering finality that further convinces us that Barbados’ economic slide has gotten worse.
This severe deterioration has come about despite the repeated onerous bouts of taxation imposed by the late David Thompson and Sinckler as his successor as Finance Minster, and despite the warnings from Opposition Leader Arthur, supported by fellow economist Clyde Mascoll, that additional taxation was the wrong path to take with an economy in extended recession.
The real state of affairs was graphically portrayed and summed up in the sorry spectacle of a once pompous but now meek, subdued and unconvincing Sinckler, declaring himself to be “surprised” by Moody’s action. Surprise that could genuinely only have come from inexperience, incompetence and arrogance.
In other countries, both Sinckler and Worrell would have done the honourable thing and resigned as a mark of acceptance of responsibility.
In the absence of this unlikely noble action, Freundel Stuart would at last prove his strength as leader by firing both, in keeping with the call by Opposition leader Arthur.
As the BLP leader quite rightly observed, “amateur hour” by Sinckler is a national luxury that Barbados can no longer afford if it is to be pulled out the economic gully into which it has been plunged.
Beresford Leon Padmore is a pseudonym for the Barbados Labour Party.