May 2015 Financial News

Barbados PM defends country after bleak IMF report

May 05, 2015

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Tuesday May 5, 2015 – Prime Minister Freundel Stuart has insisted that is Barbados is not at the bottom of the economic totem pole as suggested in a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report.

He was adamant that Barbados was finding its way back to economic robust growth and in terms of human development, infrastructure and other indices, it was continuing to do well.

Stuart’s response, following the official opening of Phase Eight of the Youth in Agriculture Programme yesterday, came on the heels of the IMF’s latest Regional Economic Outlook for the Western Hemisphere which predicted that Barbados would lag at the bottom and grow by only 0.8 per cent this year and 1.4 per cent in 2016, while the growth rate for the other Caribbean countries, including Haiti, would be higher.

“When you say to me that Barbados is at the bottom of the totem pole in the Caribbean, I do not think anybody in the Caribbean who hears that will be persuaded by it,” he said.

“In the context of the entire Caribbean, I don’t think that Barbadians have anything to be ashamed about. We know that we have been going through some challenges and that we have to try and work our way back to where we want to be and that we are doing. I don’t think that there is any need for despair.”

Stuart noted that there was a time when no growth was being predicted. If there was some growth now being projected, he said, “it means that we are doing something right and we are doing something right in the context of very difficult global circumstances”.

The IMF growth predictions conflicted with the forecast of Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados Dr DeLisle Worrell who said the economy would grow by between 1.5 per cent and two per cent this year.

But Stuart insisted that Barbados was working its way back to robust economic growth.

“We just have to continue to do the work that we are doing and get ourselves back to where we want to be. What we are experiencing here is really no different from what other countries across the western world have been experiencing for some time, including the most powerful country on earth . . . We have to continue practising the kind of discipline that we have been practising recently and continue to ensure that the standard of living and quality of life of our people suffer no diminution as a result of present challenges,” he said.

The Barbados government last year introduced a fiscal consolidation programme which has resulted in cuts, including the retrenchment of about 3,000 public sector workers.

Source:
Caribbean360
Tuesday May 5, 2015

http://www.caribbean360.com/news/barbados-pm-defends-country-after-bleak-imf-report#ixzz3ZIIwxU5r