Government wants the private sector to play a more active role in helping Barbados grow its exports to significantly boost foreign exchange earnings and generate wealth that stays on the island.
Minister of Finance Ryan Straughn said that having spent eight years making Barbados fiscally sound via the first two Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programmes, BERT 3.0 was about making the country “economically formidable”.
“BERT 3.0 is contingent on competitiveness and growth, and that growth has to be driven and led by the private sector, with a little more focus on exports. Therefore, it is important that we move quickly, and that we move with purpose to ensure we can unlock opportunities for investment for Barbadians,” he told participants at the CAF Private Sector Dialogue yesterday.
The event was convened by CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and took place at the Sagicor Cave Hill School of Business and Management, The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
“Today is really a deliberate intent to ensure that we can chart a different path . . . for Barbados, and so the Government is driving export-led growth . . . . It is really an intentional strategic priority, because we’ve decided that this country will compete outward, earn more foreign exchange and generate wealth that stays right here in Barbados, and certainly across the region,” the minister said.
Facilities available
With Barbados now a full member of CAF, Straughn said this meant “the envelope of facilities available now can be deployed to the private sector”.
“This is an intentional commitment to unlock some of those untapped opportunities that we know exist not just here in Barbados, but really across the region to strengthen businesses to be able to make our economy much more resilient,” he noted.
Straughn told business community representatives that they needed to “get to know what is available directly from CAF as potential opportunities for investment and financing, and this is not to be seen in any way as being in any competition with the local financial institutions”.
“You need scale, you need to invest in opportunities that give our people the same kind of return as others in the world. Therefore, we have it within us to do the hard work to find the right projects, find the right partners, the right financiers to be able to make these things possible for our people,” he said.
“We do have some very exciting opportunities right here in Barbados that just require the right type of exposure, and . . . we want to see those businesses persevering by having the opportunity for Barbados to scale alongside the strategic partners.”
He spoke of the important role the private sector needed to play and committed to continue providing the necessary enabling policies.
“Export-led growth is not a Government project with the private sector as cheerleaders on the sideline. It requires investment risk and the kind of bold commercial decisionmaking that only you in this room can make deliberately,” Straughn added.
“So Government will build the highway, but we cannot drive your car on that highway. Therefore, we will encourage all of you to . . . ensure that we come away from this with a very clear mindset as to how we are going to be proactive and deliberate with respect to our decision making moving forward.” (SC)
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