Prime Minister Mia Mottley is giving the assurance that Government will continue to do all it can to ensure Barbados becomes a leader in the area of digital content creation and a hub for wider technological innovation.
And she is promising cooperation and sustained dialogue with Barbadians and social partners in achieving this, acknowledging that it was expected that some people would be slow to embrace technology.
“The time is now to unleash the power of our creative imagination. To move our island beyond cautious incrementalism and to enter a period of rapid large-scale transformation and global distinction,” said Mottley.
Her comments came in an address at the opening of Accountants’ Week 2020, held virtually on Thursday, under the theme Embracing Disruption, Building Resilience.
Mottley said as the country further embraced advancements in technology and become a “smart digital nation”, Government will ensure that concerns about job security were addressed.
She said the country already had several features towards achieving its objective, but said “we are not yet where we want to be – cashless, carbon neutrality, e-governance, e-identification, public sector innovation, technology entrepreneur hubs, free nation-wide high speed internet”.
However, she acknowledged that there were “a lot of things in motion”.
“We need to move faster than we are. We must move faster and COVID-19 has literally forced that upon us,” she said, adding that her government’s role will be to ensure people feel informed and confident that the right balance will be struck between innovation and fairness.
Highlighting areas such as the cannabis industry, life sciences, culinary sciences, robotics, manufacturing, elderly care, agriculture, software development, data engineering, cultural industries and sports, Mottley said “We want to build new industries with new jobs, requiring new skills.”
“We want to create a new value chain . . . We will strive to become a leading hub for experience and pilot and scale ideas,” she added.
Stressing that there could be no serious economic recovery without jobs, Mottley said the plan of making Barbados an innovation hub should enable a fruitful job market post COVID-19.
“A recovery underpinned by new and high-quality jobs in sustainable sectors and industries must always be the objective to which we aspire,” said the Prime Minister.
She said while the pandemic had slowed the country’s trajectory of achieving its technological goals “it has not dulled our ambition”.
“What it has done is make it abundantly clear to my government that as leaders of a small island developing state, which is vulnerable to known and yet to be discovered forces of man and nature, our aim must be to give our people and government a sufficient buffer,” she said.
“The question therefore is what will Barbados’ prosperity look like – prosperity needed to give us that buffer, a diversified vibrant economy, surplus of work opportunities, high levels of work productivity, harmony and neutrality, fairness and transparency, accountability, peace and good vibes,” added Mottley.
“If we agree the future of the world, and by extension the future of the Caribbean, is embedded in technology, then technology must be seen as an engine in every sector of our region. The how for this future prosperity that we envisage will come about by making Barbados the hub of a vibrant Caribbean technology industry,” she said.
Mottley, who is of the view that Barbados and the rest of the region could use technology to overcome several issues including climate change, added “To become a prosperous digitally enabled society, Barbados therefore will need to become a developer, an early adopter of ideas and technology that allows us to overcome every disadvantage of being a small island developing state, small population and small economy.”
She called on the accountants to play a role in the building out of technology on the island, saying it should be used in the profession more.
President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados (ICAB) Lydia McCollin told the online forum that the association has made major strides in completing its strategic objectives in the areas of public sector engagement, risk management and mitigation, digital transformation and communications.
In November 2019 ICAB submitted recommendations on how it could assist Government in achieving public national reform.
She said ICAB officials have since met with senior government officials on some of the proposals.
“As a result, we are currently planning continuing professional development and training as well as developing a corporate governance framework for the public sector,” said McCollin.
She said: “with respect to digitization, we are working on a digitization of ICABs processes and workflows”, adding that ICAB was also expanding its reach through increased use of social media and other forms of communication.
