Barbados Private Sector Association Chair Discusses Pro-Business Shift in Budget Towards BERT II Objectives

“With [the closure of the Productivity Council], we lost our capacity, however flawed perhaps, to at least attempt to measure productivity in this country. And as much as we speak about growth, if we don’t speak about productivity similarly and with the same level of passion, we are essentially going to be sub-optimising. However we grow, we are going to be sub-optimising, simply because we’re not going to achieve the multiplier effect of growing productively and sustainably,” the BPSA chairman said.

“There is a bit of urgency and impatience with essentially the investment climate, and that’s understandable. But I would also say that we do need to look more seriously at diversification, and not just diversification within the existing sectors but how do we actually diversify outside of the existing sectors to really bring a high level of resilience.

”Such that if we are hit with a climate catastrophe, we are not wholly dependent on perhaps a much more diversified tourism sector, but still a tourism sector, nevertheless, that is going to be negatively impacted, and catastrophically so, by climate impacts.”

The BCCI also gave a thumbs up to the budgetary proposals. President James Clarke said the initiatives outlined by the Prime Minister sought to “provide incentives in a more navigable regulatory environment to create simpler paths to unlocking private sector capital in the country”.

“The creation of Business Barbados and the digitalisation of all government services onto a common platform, coupled with the strengthening of digital space and skills in Barbados, is most welcome. And this will no doubt feed right into the burgeoning film industry, which utilises many of these same said digital skills,” he said.

Turning his attention to the renewable energy sector, the chamber president expressed concern about inadequate storage capacity on the grid. Urging swift action, he contended an area of investment which required urgent attention was the restarting of the renewable energy market, which he said was currently stalled due to the lack of storage capacity on the grid.

“We understand that the government, specifically the Ministry of Energy and Business, is actively engaged in the procurement of such battery storage whilst the Barbados Light and Power are still awaiting a decision from the Fair Trading Commission regarding their clean energy transition rider application which will allow them to recover the costs associated with the green energy transition including the purchase of storage batteries.

“At present, there is about $60 million tied up in completed renewable energy projects awaiting the installation of storage batteries so that they can be connected to the grid. The time is of the essence to procure these storage systems, to restart the market and to meet Barbados’ clean energy transition goals. So, we all know that the proof of the pudding is in the eating and I certainly like a good pudding as much as anybody else,” Clarke said. (RG)