Barbadians encouraged to invest

The Budget, as presented by the Prime Minister of Barbados, and Minister of Finance, Mia Amor Mottley, outlines two incentives for Barbadians to invest in developing the country.

This comment was made by John Edward Clarke, COO and General Manager Sagicor Life Inc., during a panel discussion that took place during the Post Budget Breakfast Discussion, hosted by the BCCI in collaboration with PwC, which was held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre yesterday morning.

“This budget is one of the first where we actually see two incentives for Barbadians to invest in developing the country. We have been clamouring for this, the green bond fund certainly is going to be a big plus for Barbadians,” he said.

He believed that this was something that needed to be done, as individual Barbadians were in dire need of more avenues to invest in.

“There is very little to invest in in Barbados, the stock market is dormant; we need to generate opportunities and this is an incentive for people to put their money into something that can generate good returns and I agree with Winston, I think the tax credit is a wonderful avenue for that,” he said.

“There is no doubt that the additional cash flow coming out of the Vat refunds and Income Tax Refunds, and the lower Income Tax rates, there’s going to be much more spendable income and I am hopeful that people don’t just spend all on material items and consumer type items, although that would help businesses in Barbados, but I would like to see some investing money wisely.”

He lightheartedly added that he believed that some “wise financial thinking would help them for life” as he believed that it was time for the wider Barbadian public to understand the value of investing.

Clarke highlighted that trying to help and work with the wider Barbadian public to understand the value of investing was something that has been tried in the past and results were not promising, however, he believed that now was the time to tackle this problem again and help persons to see the true value of taking risks, managing a risk and getting returns for that risk.