BUSINESS MONDAY: Foreign exchange earnings must increase: Dr. Worrell

THE Barbados economy will only show strong growth when there are sizeable inflows of foreign investments.

That’s the position of Economist, Dr. Delisle Worrell, while responding to a query from Business Monday.

“As I have said repeatedly, the economy cannot grow unless we increase foreign exchange (FX) earnings, and tourism earnings were not growing, even before the global pandemic,” he said.

Dr. Worrell spoke to this newspaper prior to the recent half-year economic review presented by Governor of the Central bank of Barbados, Cleviston Haynes.

Responding to the query whether the economy would have been doing a lot better if there was no pandemic, the International Business consultant said he “very much doubt it”.

He went on, “We only have one cylinder firing at the moment – that’s tourism. The International Business and Financial Services (IBFS) sector is under attack from several quarters, and is in free fall, and manufactured exports are stuck around $500 million a year.”

He stated that Tourism is losing competitiveness because of the deterioration of the infrastructure and the general inefficiency of the public sector.