Former Finance Ministers Owen Arthur and Chris Sinckler will be among members of a job and investment council being set up by Government to help chart the way forward for the Barbados economy.
In a national address this evening, Prime Minister Mia Mottley warned there would be no going back to the norm before the COVID-19 pandemic, but stressed that Barbados would have to create “a new normal and a new normal will require new economic paradigms.”
Declaring that there was no time to waste, she stressed that her Government would have a “ laser-like focus” on where the jobs and the investment” would come from as the country emerges from the pandemic.
Mottley said Cabinet had given the nod of the approval to the new broad-based council, which will also include members of the social partnership.
“That will help us with how do we mobilise and catalyse all of the investments and to create all the jobs that we possibly can, first, in a COVID-19 environment and two, in a post- COVID-19 environment.”
She revealed that Arthur and Sinckler had already given their consent but regretted that former Prime Minister and Finance Minister Erskine Sandiford was not in a position to serve on the council.
“Because this country will use all resources to ensure that there will be no surrender, no retreat but also that there will be transformation.”
Prime Minister Mottley also told the nation she will shortly outline a broader economic package that “is about transformation and not just about survival in the near future.”
She assured that the country was in a better position to meet the challenges ahead, pointing out that the island’s foreign reserves currently stand at BDS$1.56 billion and will be bolstered by an additional BDS$360 million from the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank over the next four to six weeks.
