Barbados Sustainable Recovery Plan outlined
The local business community was yesterday given details about the Barbados Sustainable Recovery Plan (BSRP), which Prime Minister Freundel Stuart says requires the buy-in of all the social partners for it to be successfully implemented.
Delivering the feature address at the first business luncheon of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) for 2018, held at the Hilton Hotel yesterday, Stuart explained that the Plan has as its broad vision, “a society that is economically, environmentally and socially sustainable with a return to investment grade” and to ensure its successful implementation, a sub-committee of the Social Partnership will have oversight for the BSRP. This Social Partnership Oversight Subcommittee is to be comprised of nine members pulled from the Government, Trade Unions and the Private Sector and he said that it is “vital” that each sector commits to the implementation of the Plan.
With that in mind, he said that the Plan has six goals, which seek to build a comfortable net international reserves level by 2020; achieve fiscal sustainability through a balanced budget by fiscal year 2020/21; accelerate real gross domestic product growth to reach three per cent by 2021 and establish a credible and sustainable debt management plan. Additionally, he stated that the intention is to enhance and protect the provisions for sustainable social development and reduce the unemployment level on average to eight per cent.
Moments earlier, he said that the average unemployment rate for the four quarters ending June 2017 was ten per cent. PM Stuart said it is expected that unemployment levels will remain relatively stable around the ten per cent threshold at the conclusion of this current financial year which ends March 31, 2018.
The Prime Minister went on to tell the packed room that the recovery plan has four thematic areas – fiscal sustainability, growth, foreign exchange and social services – representing the areas which will require attention if the country is to attain the six stated goals. He indicated that in respect of growth, the Plan which is comprised of 37 objectives and associated strategies, is geared towards stimulating investments and establishing an enabling environment for increased growth. Stuart revealed that one of the main proposals is to enable a thriving and sustainable export sector driven by the manufacturing and agricultural sectors and the micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSME).
“This endeavour will, of course, be supported by fostering an enabling business environment through, among other things: a Product Development Programme; improved access to seed funding and credit, especially to MSMEs; active pursuit of very specific market opportunities in targeted markets that can offer returns in the short to medium-term – markets such as Cuba, Panama, CARICOM, USA, UK and China,” he said.
With respect to the foreign reserves, he indicated that the recovery plan has two critical objectives. He said to address the instability of the level of foreign reserves, the intention is to develop a parallel approach where initiatives that earn foreign exchange are simultaneously used with those which save foreign exchange and secondly, he said there needs to be expeditious disbursement of funds for the public sector projects.
“Clearly the future sustainability of our foreign reserves should be predicated on the country’s ability to earn foreign currency as opposed to Government continuously having to go to the international markets to borrow to prop up our foreign reserves. Such activity accumulates foreign debt and is, in the end, not sustainable,” he said.
Meanwhile, with respect to social services, the Prime Minister gave the assurance that Government will, as it seeks to improve the efficiency in the public operations, protect the standard of living to which Barbadians have become accustomed. To that end, he said that contained with the BSRP are 17 objectives aimed at protecting the poor and vulnerable, while also improving their quality of life and livelihood through the provision of employment opportunities and social services to assist those who cannot help themselves.
“This includes, but is not limited to, the establishment of a means-testing framework and the development of a retraining and retooling programme,” he said.
(JRT)