2023: Economic Growth and Stability in Barbados, Experts Highlight Challenges and New Year Resolutions for Government

Looking ahead to 2024, Bruce suggested that the government should focus on effective debt management.

He said: “One of the things the government really has to look towards regarding 2024, is how does the Barbados government become less reliant on debt. One of the ways to do that is really through growth. Now as I said, you have had some growth in the economy, but is it to the extent that it is offsetting the amount of debit you are taking on and offsetting some of the costs related to inflation? So I think debt management has to be one of the things the government looks at.”

Addressing infrastructure concerns, Bruce emphasised the need for a comprehensive road rehabilitation programme, urging a shift from temporary pothole repairs to sustainable solutions involving improved drainage, material quality, and contracts with repair responsibilities assigned to relevant entities.

“You have a situation where, quite frankly, you have been having a significant deterioration of the roads over the last couple months and last couple years, I would say, and we seem just to be spinning top in mud in the sense that you come, you do road repairs, and a couple weeks after the same repair, the [road] is back to where it was,” he said.

“There is clearly a need for a full road rehabilitation programme, and it can’t be a pothole programme. [There must be a] situation where there is sufficient drainage; where the water does not destroy the roads, for instance; the change in the materials, for instance; better contracts as it relates to the entities doing these roads [so that] if within a certain time period the road is damaged, it’s the responsibility now of that entity to repair [the road] as opposed to the responsibility of the government. Those are the things we have to start thinking about going forward.”

In her analysis, Dr Hinds acknowledged the growth projections for Barbados, with the Central Bank anticipating moderate economic growth of around 4.5 per cent in 2023.

Despite this positive outlook, she highlighted the need to address overlooked societal issues, specifically child abuse. While acknowledging government efforts with the Child Protection Bill, she stressed the importance of tangible actions to effectively combat child abuse.

“There are things that we don’t talk about a lot, but Barbados is a place that continues to have high levels of child sexual abuse and sexual assault, and these are things that we need to address along with the violent crimes, and I am not sure that this government or any government really has been particularly effective in dealing with these issues despite introducing things like the Child Protection Bill,” she said.

“We talk about gun crime, and those kinds of things when we are talking about crime, but we don’t talk about the other areas that I don’t think that we are doing enough to address. There is a lot more we need to do in that area [child abuse].”

Dr Hinds emphasised the necessity of focusing on diverse sectors beyond tourism, suggesting a greater emphasis on manufacturing, agriculture, and incentives for commercial involvement in agriculture to address public health concerns like non-communicable diseases.

She said: “As much as I would love to see an emphasis on other industries, it seems as if we are focused on tourism. We are focused on seeing how many hotels we can build, and tourist accommodations and what we can do to revitalise the city for tourism in addition to other purposes. It would be good if we tried to put some emphasis on seeing how we can diversify manufacturing in Barbados of products and not just importing.

“We [also] need to have far more emphasis on agriculture, we need to have incentives for people to be involved in agriculture commercially – and this is both for people’s well-being and also for things such as non-communicable diseases that we are addressing.”

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