Barbadians don’t want a devaluation of their currency and Governor of the Central Bank Dr DeLisle Worrell says he has delivered that blunt message to international rating agencies and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Years after Barbados rejected this as an option in the face of the foreign currency crisis of 1991, Worrell said it was still among the first prescriptions from many economists in rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) and the IMF.
During his standard quarterly meeting with the media at the Central Bank, Worrell said: “It is Barbadians who have rejected devaluation because they understand that since we don’t produce what we consume, that strategy cannot work, and it cannot work for any country that is like Barbados.”
He explained, however, that neither the ratings agencies nor the IMF had asked Barbados to devalue its currency which has been pegged to the United States dollar at 2:1 since 1973.
