Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment, Ryan Straughn, has highlighted the importance of expanding the island’s services sector, saying that it is needed to keep the economy going.
Speaking as a panellist during the Barbados Coalition of Services Industries’ Breakfast Forum, at Sandals Royal Hotel, on the Role of Barbados’ Services Sector in the Economic Diversification of Barbados, the Minister mentioned the importance of completing surveys, such as the Central Bank of Barbados’ Balance of Payments Survey.
Mr. Straughn added that failure to complete such instruments was problematic. He stated: “From a policy perspective, the Government needs to be aware and to keep track of what is happening within the economy. Therefore, with the perspective of trying to achieve economic diversification, we really do need to understand exactly the specific areas that people are engaging in, such that the information flow comes back between the regulators and the decision-makers, in order to help drive the environment for encouraging growth in this area.”
He continued: “Barbados’ economy today would not be what it is without services, and I think that we all can appreciate and understand the connection between the investment that is made, not only just in tourism, but generally across the infrastructure of the economy, whether it is financial services, or telecoms services, to be the facilitator of the process of diversification.”
The Minister added that the purpose of diversification is to build economic resilience instead of relying on a significant part of the economy to survive. He stressed that the COVID-19 pandemic had shown that it was the other important elements of the services sector that kept Barbados afloat while tourism had ground to a halt.
“…Therefore, we cannot underscore the importance of being able to capture that data to develop economic and business intelligence. [This is necessary to ensure] that practitioners within the service sector, as well as Government, can then mobilise domestic and regional financing resources to see how we can scale-up not just what we are delivering in Barbados, but effectively how we are going to get the service delivery to be global,” Mr. Straughn underlined.
He further stated: “The first thing we have to appreciate as practitioners is that we have to provide information to the Government, …not only tax information which is important…, it is the other kind of information that is required, that allows us to determine strategically [that] we are going after these specific interests and we will align our resources and the connections…”
Minister Straughn suggested that the Central Bank and the BCSI foster a closer working relationship to assist Government with capturing the data that is necessary to guide future policy decisions.
Also on the panel were Chief Executive Officer of Sagicor Bank Barbados, George Thomas, and Trade and Development Specialist, Allyson Francis. The session was moderated by Research Fellow at the Shridath Ramphal Centre at The University of the West Indies, Alicia Nicholls.