Govt defends $413m in new borrowing for QEH expansion

Barbados is set to receive more than $400 million in new loans — most of it from China — to expand the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and upgrade public health services, Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn told Parliament on Tuesday.

 

Straughn tabled a resolution in Parliament to borrow $313.6 million from the China Sinopharm International Corporation and a further US$50 million (BDS$100 million) from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Fund for International Development.

 

Outlining that the government is constrained by how it can spend the Chinese loan funds, Straughn said the administration needed to expand the island’s main hospital and the services it can offer citizens.

 

This includes the design and construction of an outpatient facility and an oncology centre at the expanded Enmore site across the road.

 

The Christ Church East Central MP insisted that the Mottley administration was committed to providing quality healthcare and education for Barbadians, and that borrowing was a necessary part of the process.

 

Pushing back on criticism that the government was borrowing too much and had little to show for the billions borrowed since coming to office, Straughn argued that just as households must decide where to spend, the government, too, had to determine how best to allocate funding and when it made sense to borrow.

 

He told the House: “People have been asking: You’re borrowing all this money, where is the money going? When Barbadians start to see the construction and the demolition and the erection of these buildings taking place, I hope that they will remember that we came to this chamber.”

 

Directing his comments to several secondary school and university students sitting in the public gallery, the minister said people were paying taxes and contributing to the provision of education and healthcare from which many young people were benefiting.

 

He noted that, over time, those students would be expected to shoulder their responsibilities as adults by also paying their fair share of taxes and contributing to Barbados’ ongoing development.

 

Switching his focus to the $100 million loan from the OPEC Fund for International Development, the minister said this policy-based loan had no specific earmark and therefore allowed government the flexibility to “determine how it would use the resources”.

 

Crediting the work of former economic affairs minister Marsha Caddle, Straughn told the chamber she had been a key figure in negotiations for a range of policy-based instruments for the country.

 

Caddie, the St Michael South Central MP, working with the Multilateral Development Bank, secured a range of policy-based loans for projects to fix issues at the Barbados Water Authority, including the replacement of old pipelines, purchasing electric buses for public transport, and acquiring new garbage trucks, he said.

(IMC)