Barbados:
You Can’t Have Your Cake And Eat It Too

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur has strongly warned Barbados that it simply “cannot have its cake and eat it too” when it comes to the vexed matter of creating a Caribbean Community Single Market and Economy (CSME).

Delivering a special lecture here on Thursday night entitled “Transforming the Economy In An Age of Liberalization”, Arthur sought to press home the significance of the CSME to the local economy, while warning his compatriots that they need to do away with a perceived “antagonistic attitude” towards their Caribbean neighbours.

The former prime minister, who is a trained economist, pointed out that “Jamaica can afford to do without the CSME because only two or three per cent of their goods would be affected, but for us, (Barbados) it is 52 per cent”.

Furthermore, Arthur noted that Barbadian service providers were the ones taking advantage of the current single market arrangements, amounting to about BDS$500 million (US$250 million) in business for its distributive sector alone.

“Barbados cannot have its cake and eat it too,” he cautioned, adding that “the people in St. Vincent, St. Lucia (and), Guyana are imposing the Common External Tariff (CET) on goods coming from the rest of the world to allow them to be able to buy Barbados goods, which we could not sell them without that CET".

Arthur, who is currently doing a study for CARICOM on integration of small economies under the CSME, further explained that for many small states the only benefit to be derived is the export of skills.

“This used to be Barbados’ situation at the turn of the 20th century. 41, 000 Barbadians left here and went to Panama and that migration enabled a Barbadian middle class to emerge that gave us the leap forward in the 20th century.

“Other countries now need that leap forward and if we can help them, while they help us keep our people employed, then we should have that win-win situation rather than have this antagonistic attitude for our neighbours,” he said to loud cheers from the crowd gathered at the Errol Barrow Centre at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

Arthur, who served as prime minister for 14 years between 1994 to 2008, maintained that Barbados still has the most to gain from the creation of the CSME.

He lamented the slow pace of implementation of the CSME, while stressing the importance of labour mobility to the development of Caribbean enterprises.

At the same time, he was full of praise for moves by the nine member Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to forge its own economic union, while warning that Barbados is the only country that stood to pay a price for not being part of that process. “We are on the same development path as the OECS.

We are just another Eastern Caribbean country and if the OECS succeeds in putting its union together it would be a bigger market to start with, have full labour mobility … and the country that would pay the price for not being part of that process is Barbados,’ said Arthur, whose former government had proposed a partnership with the OECS in 1994.

The former Prime Minister however labeled as "amoral" the current energy arrangement with Venezuela that allows regional states to delay the payment of debt for 25 years.

But he reserved his staunchest criticism on the night for the current administration in Bridgetown, branding many of its policies as "draconian", even while warning that a "dangerous form of serendipity" is emerging on the island.

He expressed strong concern about the current size of its fiscal deficit, which currently stands at eight percent of GDP, while suggesting that the David Thompson government is placing too way too much emphasis on social entitlements such as free bus fares and summer camps and constituency councils to the detriment of creating social capital.

In the midst of talk of a wage freeze and stringent remedies supported by agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, Arthur also cautioned that austerity will not lead the island up a path towards economic prosperity.

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