2024 Barbados Budget Forecast: UWI Economist Predicts Consumer Relief and Small Business Priorities

A UWI economist is forecasting that Prime Minister Mia Mottley will provide some relief for consumers from the high cost of living when she delivers her 2024 Budgetary Proposals in Parliament on Monday.

But the spokeswoman for the nation’s small business community has declared that instead of new proposals, it wants to see existing long-promised initiatives properly implemented, such as the junior stock exchange, collateral registry, and revisions to online and small business taxes from previous budgets.

Professor Justin Robinson, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal at the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus, also predicts that businesses would be offered initiatives to boost growth in the economy.

“What I anticipate is that the government would be trying to be innovative…will try to find ways to generate the fiscal space that it can do at least two things,” he told Barbados TODAY.

One of those things, he suggested, would be “some ease around the cost of living that persons have been complaining about, also provide initiatives for businesses and sectors of the economy, all aimed at driving growth”.

“And thirdly, have enough capacity for the government to undertake capital expenditure, all aiming to drive growth. But at the same time, you have to be innovative to do this, and remain on a target to that debt to GDP ratio of 60 per cent by 2035.”

In contrast, the Small Business Association of Barbados (SBA) said there was no need to recommend any new proposals in the Budget.

Chief Executive Officer Dr Lynette Holder suggested the association merely wants the government to implement its promised proposals for small businesses dating back even before the Mottley administration took office in 2018

She said her key “wish is for government to work”.

“We don’t have a list of wishes per se or introducing any new concepts, any new programmes,” Dr Holder told Barbados TODAY. “We want to see the existing ones that have been articulated before properly operationalised. That is our issue. There are so many initiatives that have been mentioned for the small business sector that are just not working, and we want to see them working.”

Dr Holder recalled that Mottley had introduced a junior stock exchange in her 2019 budget, but complained that five years later, the initiative “is prodding along slowly, and, in my view, too slowly”.

The SBA leader said: “The Collateral Registry again was one of those initiatives that was mentioned that would help slow firms who wanted to access funds but who don’t have collateral. You can use what is known as your moving assets, you can use equipment, you can use your stock. Where is the Collateral Registry today?”