slanderous!
Inaccurate and an editorial exaggeration of the highest proportions.
That’s how Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Stephen Lashley, has described an article that appeared in the British newspaper The Telegraph earlier this week, which painted a dismal picture of Barbados, citing leaking sewage on the beaches, a poorly performing economy and government corruption as among the alleged issues responsible for that.
In a detailed and passionate response yesterday as he delivered the Astor B. Watts Lunchtime Lecture, on the topic “Achievements of the DLP in Office and the Way Forward”, Minister Lashley, who said he was speaking not only as a Cabinet Minister but a proud Barbadian, refuted the contents of the article, contending that it is misleading and insulting to Barbados and included many inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims.
Moreover, questioning the timing and tone of the article, Lashley speculated whether political forces are at play and maintained that the Government is not sitting idly by, but is in fact putting together a concise response on the issues spoken to in the story.
He said the response will be sent to The Telegraph, adding that the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport will also be putting Barbados’ side to our source markets.
“I believe that given what the article speaks to, that the author and the publisher may very well have crossed the line of defamation of the Cabinet of Barbados. If Barbados as a country could also claim defamation, I believe Barbados itself would have been significantly defamed. The article says Barbados stinks and that tourists are leaving, and that many tourists and Barbadians are coming down with violent bouts of gastroenteritis, and then it spoke of allegations of member of Cabinet being featured in the local newspapers in relation to highly questionable conduct,” Lashley, a trained attorney, noted.
He added, “This particular article from a paper that is supposed to be reputable, in my view tarnishes Barbados’ reputation. We all know we have a sewage problem on the South Coast of Barbados, we know what is happening on the South Coast of Barbados, but this article creates the impression that the whole of Barbados has a sewage problem.”
A visibly annoyed Lashley said that following the release of the article, he personally visited one of the beaches on the South Coast and took photographs and videos which he posted on his Facebook page, to show that locals and tourists alike were enjoying the pristine beaches and water, and he is challenging “whoever helped the writer of that article to put that on The Telegraph too”. With that in mind, the Culture Minister, a former journalist, maintained that the writer in an effort to be balanced, should have given the authorities in Barbados an opportunity to respond, rather than being “highly pejorative”. He said Government believes it is inexcusably that proper research was not done to show that despite the economic challenges, Barbados has still been ranked as the top developing country in the world in the Human Development Index.
Contending that the challenges in the economy were not of the Government’s making, but the global economic and financial downturn, he said while Government has been accused in the article of doing nothing, there is evidence to the contrary, which he hopes the UK newspaper will also print. He indicated that they have successfully defend the parity of the Barbados dollar vis-a-vis the United States dollar; contained the external current account deficit bringing it down to just above four percent in 2017; and reduced the fiscal deficit to a projected 4.7 percent for fiscal year 2017-2018. Moreover, he said the country has been able to restore economic growth over the last two years, even though it has been moderate.
Lashley admitted too that though the country's debt metrics have deteriorated in recent years, that it had nothing to do with incompetence or economic mismanagement, but is directly related to the fact that the country has had to run high deficits as a result of revenue declines, due primarily to issues in the tourism and international business sectors. He explained that the country lost several hundred million US dollars in inflows from tourism expenditure and foreign direct investment, and US$100 million per year in tax revenues, due directly to alterations made by the Canadian Federal Government to its tax and banking laws in 2011.
“In fact, if the writer were to take just a little time to do some concrete research she would have seen that in fact government has been able to contain and bring its expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, from the highs of 36 percent down to 32 percent at the end of 2016. Of course, revenue though recovering from lows of 26 percent of GDP in 2013 has also been able to recover to around 29 percent of GDP on average over the last three years. The difference in this has meant that government has had to do greater short term borrowing, to meet the needs of an expecting and deserving population, while maintaining economic and social stability in the country,” he said.
The Minister also noted that while the current foreign exchange reserves are not at a desired level, the government is moving to shore up those levels through an immediate programme of a foreign exchange borrowing and domestic asset sales to be paid in US dollars. That, he said, will to take care of the short to medium term needs of the country.
“It is therefore again erroneous to say that the government is doing nothing to address the current economic challenges and therefore the article in our view is inaccurate and cannot stand up to scrutiny,” he maintained. (JRT)
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