Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley is challenging the business community to help lead Barbados out of its comfort zone and make a push towards achieving inclusive economic growth of three to five per cent.
As she celebrates eight years in office, Mottley said the economy was growing and investment was booming, with major new projects, including Government infrastructure and several branded hotels in the works.
This included not only the longmooted Hyatt Hotel in Bridgetown, but a likely second one bearing that same brand in Speightstown, St Peter, as a neighbour of the new Beaches property to be constructed by Sandals Resorts International at Heywoods.
The Prime Minister made a strong call for all Barbadians, including corporate Barbados, to lead the charge towards making the country world class over the next few years as she saluted the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) yesterday during its Legacy of Leaders Celebration Luncheon at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
She wants Barbadians to focus on making their nation more resilient, innovative, productive and competitive and urged the private sector to show more leadership in these areas.
Calling the BCCI’s 200th anniversary celebration a significant event, Mottley said that “in this room lies the capacity for this country to determine where it wants to go”.
“Today, I stand before you leading a country that has had 20 straight quarters of economic growth, but a country that is faced both domestically and externally with challenges which cumulatively could destabilise us once again, or which, if overcome, can be the boon in our sails to allow us to go [up] rather than to dip,” she told the audience of some of Barbados’ leading entrepreneurs, business owners and senior executives, several of whom were recognised with awards.
“And the question remains: what is it that we collectively must do to be able to reach that pathway where instead of the comfort of two and a half per cent [economic] growth, sometimes three [per cent], that we set new horizons that ought to be within our reach to reach three to five per cent growth on a consistent basis, subject, of course, to global headwinds or natural disaster strikes.” Mottley said Government was playing its part in developing the country, including through the planned construction of a cruise pier at the Bridgetown Port, building a new Government Headquarters and having a new convention centre on the site of the old Geriatric Hospital. She also gave an update on major investments, particularly those in the tourism sector. This included the possibility that Barbados could have two Hyatt Hotels. “Indigo is open, Royalton effectively got their licences to do their soft opening this week and will be officially opened in mid-July. Pendry had the topup ceremony and will finish in a year’s time,” Mottley said. “Beaches is doing earthworks. There is a request for a Hyatt next to that. Pierhead [Project in Bridgetown], I just met with their developers this morning. Hyatt next door, I met with the Hyatt people from Latin America and the Caribbean because not just Speightstown, but Bridgetown that we know that we’ve been waiting on . . . . But it is almost here.
“The lot between those two, which is owned by the . . . owner of Indigo, who promised that once he finished Indigo, that would be the next undertaking,” she added, while reminding of the Afreximbank investment at Jemmotts Lane, St Michael, and work at Apes Hill, St James.
Mottley said the country “is going to have a conversation as well about the next zone for tourism”, including new offshore islands.
“We’ve paused because money was an issue, but if the revenue can accommodate it, we have to do the environmental, social and impact assessment on the possibility of . . . 400 acres of offshore islands on the southeastern coast of this country because that is what will drive the next 30 years of Barbados within the tourism sector,” she noted. (SC)
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