AMID THE enchanting music, traditional delicious West Indian dishes and family gatherings this Christmas week, there prevails a mood of uncertainty across Barbados about its future social and economic progress.
It is a mood spawned largely by a combination of the impending retrenchment of thousands of public sector workers and continuing downgrades by international rating agencies on the country’s economic performance with dim prospects for change in the short term.
The depressing mood is lending itself to various speculative scenarios, not the least being an expected cabinet reshuffle to be announced by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart either in his coming New Year’s message to the nation or shortly thereafter.
While heads of government generally delight in mocking speculation about impending cabinet changes, there are increasing reports of a now inevitable cabinet reshuffle as one of the significant political initiatives to be pursued by the Prime Minister within the first quarter of 2014.
The Cabinet changes are expected to include replacement of controversial Finance Minister Chris Sinckler by Minister of Agriculture Dr David Estwick, as well as the appointment of what has long been absent from Mr Stuart’s administration – a Deputy Prime Minister. Current thinking suggests that this portfolio is most likely to be allotted to Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy.
With a parliamentary majority of merely two in the 30-member House of Assembly, Prime Minister Stuart can be expected to be most careful in his options for changes in ministerial portfolios.
Meanwhile, though not targeted with persistent negative ratings from international agencies, as is currently the case for Barbados, various other countries in the Eastern Caribbean region continue to be plagued by slow and even negative economic growth, as recurring challenges surface to threaten social stability amid rising unemployment and gun-related criminality.
In this context the Caribbean Community’s governments would be anxious to receive the report from the Caribbean Growth Forum (CGF) on the way forward for 2014. Launched in May last year in Washington, the CFG is a combined initiative of the World Bank, IMF, Inter-American Development Bank, Caribbean Development Bank and the University of the West Indies.
While we await the major recommendations from the CFG, it is important for the region’s people to learn of the progress, if any, made to operationalize a “CARICOM Economic Commission” as unanimously decided at last July annual Heads of Government Conference in Port of Spain.
The commission’s terms of reference require it to address the priority areas for regional fiscal sustainability and resource mobilization as well as critical infrastructural services, particularly in energy and information communication technology.
The current reality within CARICOM is that while Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas and Guyana are, with various levels, in the categories of “glowing” economic performances, too many economies seem to be in serious difficulty, if not exactly in crisis.
•? Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean jrnalist.
