Minister challenges CARTAC

Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Ryan Straughn, challenged the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC) to not simply produce the technical analysis, but help support the implementation.

Straughn issued this challenge during the CARTAC meeting which took place at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre yesterday morning.

Straughn told media that the charge to CARTAC was for them to find the way not just to come up with the technical analysis but to help support the implementation not just in Barbados but across the rest of the region, in order to avoid developing policy in a vacuum.

He believes that while CARTAC’s focus was on technical assistance, the actual implementation and support, which could be provided through training, was something they needed to consider.

“Specifically in the case of Barbados we had three technical assistance reports for customs before we came to Government, and when we came in we decided we wanted to take stock and therefore we ended up doing another one, and those being the basis, engaging them actively on how we would implement it so that the reports were not just sitting there, they did their jobs but nothing was being done to actually see them through,” he said.

“So my simple message was to not just do the technical assistance, we have to find a way to ensure that it can be implemented because once a Government asks for technical assistance in a particular area, yes there may be a capacity issue as I mentioned in terms of the persons on a day to day basis managing not having the time to do that work, once we ask for technical assistance, that should indicate that there are some issues but once the technical assistance is completed we can’t just put the report on the table and leave it there, the reforms have to be implemented and that was my simple charge to CARTAC and development partners, to find a way to ensure that whatever technical assistance is made available to the region we have a way to implement,” it was further revealed.