Evolve way of thinking

Connolly: Change of mindset, businesses processes essential

THERE must be an evolution in the way business is conducted in Barbados.

So says Democratic Labour Party candidate for St. James Central, George Connolly, who was speaking at the official opening of his branch office in Flamboyant Ave, St. James yesterday evening.

Connolly stressed that there must be a shift in the mindset of entrepreneurs, with greater emphasis being placed on the ease of doing business on the island.

Telling the party faithful of his plans for the constituency, he said one of the bigger challenges for people doing business in this country is when business processes appear to be ambiguous or take long to happen. He used real estate transactions as an example, which he said could be cut down to two weeks.

“If any of us went to Canada right now we could do a land transaction in one day,” he said, adding that although attorneys would tell you there is no way to purchase a home, develop a property, we have the infrastructure already built. “All it needs is the data and most of the data is already available. Town Planning, Corporate Affairs, they all have the data. We need to merge that into a platform. This is 38 years in the making. This is nothing new that we are creating. We are 38 years behind the ball,” he said.

He explained that these transactions are all algorithm based. “Either you are in the correct zone, you have the correct height… all of the nodes as we call them in coding are available immediately. So a human, if we aggregate the data, may take a week to do it. A computer could do it in 30 seconds. The problem that we have is bringing all these agencies together to make this thing happen.”

“I can’t say one day … but certainly within a period of two weeks every single project related to real estate can be approved by this government. That is something I will work tirelessly to make happen. It will make a huge difference in this country,” he assured.

Connolly also made the point that small economies such as Barbados are experiencing what is called diseconomies of scale.

“When we look at how our population has aged, more than 30 percent of our population is now over retirement age … We have seen a reduction in income taxes, but those persons now get two gratuities, pension and healthcare provided by the state.”

He said with the regional “endemic” of youth unemployment over 20 percent, this represents a large group that is not contributing to the tax take. “That gives you imbalance and that means the cost of providing gratuity and the healthcare cost to the elderly goes up. That is what we call diseconomies of scale.”

It is against this backdrop that the entrepreneur believes that Barbados must look at the best options for the future.

“In the US there is something called a 401k. But when you have nine billion, which is equal to your GDP sitting in the bank as savings, and the instruments that we have for financial investment being so limited that the only thing people can think of with certainty to invest in is property, we have a problem. And it is a problem of thinking.

“We have to be mature enough to have the discussion that we need to start a programme where we get teenagers to start thinking about retirement with a 401K type programme. Where we teach them how to invest.

“We need to open up the local stock market. I don’t think the Barbados Stock Exchange works well. And we need to have access to international stock markets. That is one of the things that I would like us to look at.”

He stresseed while the Government of Barbados has served the people of Barbados well over the last 50 years, changes must be made. “I think we need to evolve to a level where we divest a lot of the industries that the Government holds on to so dearly. The Government needs to be a good regulator. And we need with this divestiture to be very careful and create a new Black entrepreneurial class in this country.

“I think that it is time that we have seen enough of the same old. The same five people raising their hands in running businesses. We need to give opportunities to others. That is one of the things that the government needs to do,” he said. (JH)

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