The Central Bank of Barbados has become the main financier of the country’s fiscal deficit and that is not going down well with Opposition Leader Owen Arthur.
Speaking yesterday at a Press briefing in response to that by Central Bank Governor Dr Delisle Worrell Wednesday on the economy, Arthur said he wanted to draw “the public’s attention to a matter of the utmost seriousness which needed to be the centre of discussion but a matter from which the Government ought to come back from the brink”.
“ . . . Dr Worrell should have told the people of Barbados that between April and September the Central Bank has become the principal financier of the deficit of the Government of Barbados and it printed almost $150 million to finance that deficit.
“It is now the biggest single financier of the deficit. More to the point, we have in our possession a board paper of the Central Bank that was considered at its September meeting which represents not only this large scale financing of the Government’s deficit by the printing of money by the Central Bank, but it is something that the Central Bank intends to continue, and [it] intends to increase the limit of primary issues held by the bank as Government securities from a $120 million to $250 million until March 31, 2012.”
Read the full story in today’s WEEKEND NATION.
