Plans continue for UNCTAD

Plans are continuing apace for this island’s hosting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) later this year.

Speaking in Parliament as an additional $2,280,000 was assigned to the event’s organisation, Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn stated these funds were intended specifically for the procurement of security equipment.

“As part of the Government of Barbados being able to do this, it has already received US$500,000 from the People’s Republic of China to help offset the costs and we expect to receive a further US$500,000 from the People’s Republic,” he added, noting the event was planned on a much smaller scale.

Straughn said it was necessary to forward plan for when life resumes normality.

Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Sandra Husbands, said once again Barbados and the rest of the region will be highlighting the unfairness of large international agencies deciding what type of assistance should be given to smaller countries by looking at their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

She pointed out the World Trade Organisation, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and other international agencies seek to “categorise countries based on GDP and determine what kinds of resources those countries are likely to have, and so the higher your rating is the less likely it is that you receive funding and those types of resources”.

“Barbados has been in that position for a very long time. The problem with that kind of system where you are evaluated based on GDP does not take into consideration certain inherent entities, things like the size of the country and the limitation of population development to be able to create economic growth, your location where you may be in the path of hurricanes and the impact of climate change and how any event can wipe out 50 years of growth,” she continued.

Outlining that UNCTAD was a US agency seeking to help developing countries to integrate better into the international environment, Husbands noted it was important to take steps that will “help us with broadening the environment in which we operate and to influence the global sectors that will have an impact on how we are going to be able to do business and how we are going to be able to make a living after COVID”.