BARBADOS LOSING OUT
A GOVERNMENT Minister says this country is losing millions of dollars in investments because it is taking too long to process documents for new projects
and the clearing of goods at the Customs and Excise Department.
Blaming archaic practices of doing business across the public service and the enormous volume of paperwork still in place, Dwight Sutherland, Minister of Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Commerce said that sometimes the country loses as much as $100 million in business as a consequence of those delays.
However, appealing for more time since the six months the new Government has been in office is still short, Sutherland has promised that in another six months Government will be remedying these matters, and that the situation with service delivery is going to improve.
Sutherland promised that the Government will be digitising the public service, and with the Electronic Single Window they intend to beef up services, while also improving Barbados’ rating in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business survey, where we currently sit at 129 out of 190 countries.
“It is taking business persons too long to have their applications in terms of investments coming into this country,” said Sutherland. So we want to digitise and to have e-government where we will be starting with our Cabinet first by putting on e-cabinet, the Minister declared.
He said that the idea is to lessen the use of paper since Barbados cannot reach the world by paper “because by the time you get to the international community there are other innovations”.
Recalling that he was a private sector employee before coming into Government, Sutherland pointed out that the company he worked for lost a lot of money waiting for containers to be cleared. He said they had to move from one Government Department to another depending on the nature of the imported items, to have documents processed.
“So once you have the Electronic Single Window you can see where these things have been lodged and then approved,” Sutherland explained.
"So we are also digitising the way we do business as that relates to goods coming into Barbados,” the Minister further explained.
Earlier, he noted that 10 years after the initial impact of the global financial crisis, Barbados finds itself still struggling to return to a state of normalcy. However, he is confident that in order to reclaim the glorious past, Barbados has to revolutionalise and modernise how it conducts and executes its processes.
“What is needed is the creation of an entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal and perceptible,” Sutherland added. (JB)