Business Monday: Abed concerned about economic situation

WHILE the country’s fiscal deficit is likely to be lower at the end of the current fiscal year than it was last year, there is still going to be things that need to be corrected.

This was the view shared by Eddie Abed, President of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), while commenting on the performance of the local economy for the nine months to September this year.

Last week, the Central Bank of Barbados reported that the economy had grown 1.3 per cent between January and September this year.

Abed said that a deficit means there is a shortage of revenue, and that the way the country is dealing with this is by printing dollars.

“This is just not sustainable; this is driving us closer to the point of no recovery,” the BCCI President remarked.

“We have been extremely forceful that Government must close the deficit by cutting their spending – there is no other way to do  it,” Abed said, while noting that there are several ways to cut expenditure.

Those options, he explained, include user fees, public private partnerships, and the sale of Government assets.

Abed said that like him, there are many persons in Barbados who are concerned about the economic situation. He called for a more mature and knowledgeable discussion on how to move the economy forward.

“We can’t keep talking about huge deficits and still do nothing about them. To me, that is a race to the bottom,” he reasoned. The BCCI President insisted that the private sector is what grows the economy.

He recalled that all along, they in the business community have been saying that Government remains the facilitator, to create the environment through which companies can grow and raise their revenues and the taxable dollars, employ more people, give opportunities to school leavers and move the country forward.

Abed also said that they in the BCCI were especially concerned that the expectations for growth for this year were inordinately high.

According to him, “If you start with the wrong premise, you are going to end with the wrong result. The CBB has reaffirmed our expectations that the growth was never going to be two per cent, probably more in line with one per cent to 1.5 per cent.”

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