EDITORIAL

History was created in Barbados last week when Ms. Mia Mottley became the first female Prime Minister of Barbados. She led her Barbados Labour Party to victory over the
then ruling Democratic Labour Party, a result that saw the BLP winning all 30 seats.

Those feats will continue to be discussed for a while as Barbados and particularly the BLP supporters remain in a festive and celebratory mood.

Yesterday marked another momentous occasion for Barbados when Ms. Mottley’s new Cabinet was sworn in during a ceremony at the Esplanade on Bay Street. Hundreds of people were on hand as several of her supporters joined with a number of public and private sector officials to view the proceedings. It was significant in that the new Prime Minister spoke about her government getting down to work from this morning. Importantly enough, she promised that in the event the new administration has to change course it will be levelling that with the people. “We will not conceal the facts,” she reminded the audience and those following the broadcast on radio and television. Everyone will agree with Ms. Mottley that the task ahead for correcting the ills in the Barbados economy will not be an easy one. It calls for tough choices as she herself has admitted and if we may add, there are no overnight solutions that can be effected given the magnitude of the problem. However, the issues are not insurmountable either and while they will call for a steady hand and proper planning sober minds, many people spoken to at yesterday’s ceremony believe that Barbados will emerge. It has done so in the past and will do so again.

As the new Prime Minister has said, her administration has to get down to work to tackle many (if not all) of the issues facing Barbados. The principal one is crafting an economic policy which will have as a key plank, stabilisation and then growth. Rates of growth have remained very low or even at times, there has been no growth. Only tourism of the economic sectors and to some extent construction have done enough to promote the growth.

Small states tend to go through economic contortions that have at times left their economic managers looking for viable options and alternatives to policies which have been tried before. It is not easy managing these economies which have found themselves in trouble as a consequence of downturns taking place in their key trading partners like the North Atlantic economies. These small states look to the bigger countries as markets for their exports, inflows of capital, foreign direct investment, visitor arrivals. The issue for Barbados is to stabilise the domestic economic situation and once this is done, try to maximise the relations with the metropole.

The previous government had waged a battle to turn the economy around, but its efforts were frustrated by a high fiscal deficit and the measures it introduced to contain the same deficit. It did bring the deficit down from almost 11 per cent to about 4.1 per cent at March this year. One can only wish the Government well and hope that it is successful in its endeavours.