Privatisation needed but don’t sell out, warns Atherley

by Marlon Madden

Privatisation of some state entities must take place in order to lower Government expenditure and improve efficiency, but this must not be done to the benefit of a few or at the expense of the Barbados labour force.

This is the view of former Opposition Leader Bishop Joseph Atherley, who told Today’s BUSINESS in a recent interview that several sectors, including the bread and butter tourism and agriculture, were in need of serious reform if Barbados was to build a more sustainable economy.

“The state-owned entities have always been a source of leakage in terms of government expenditure.
Even where government sought to pull back under International Monetary Fund regime from too much expenditure allocated to state entities, it has still been having to do that.
Of course, it has been able to use the COVID-19 impact as justification as to why they still spend a lot of money on statutory corporations which they were not supposed to be spending,” said Atherley.

“In terms of privatisation generally, there are always a significant role for that. In Barbados the economy needs to grow and expand. That growth and expansion must be private sector led, but government must provide the environment in which it is to take place.

Government itself must take part in it, but largely it should be private sector led. So you will find that there will be some aspect of privatisation that we must engage in,” he said.

Atherley was reluctant to say what state-owned operations should be privatised at this time, but pointing to the public/private sector arrangement being put in place at the Grantley Adams International Airport where a private entity will run the day-to-day operations, he said: “I don’t have a problem with that.”

However, he quickly pointed out that while the arrangement should allow investors to get a return on their investments, it should also result in Barbados “regaining full control” and “a better operation so that we can then boast of a facility that when people come into it, they feel like they are in some special modern place in this world”.

“Privatisation has its place, the government purse is limited. Government gets its revenue to a large extent form taxation.

Barbados is now taxed to the max, so there is not much further we can go in terms of taxation of people.

So where do you generate the revenue that you need to expend as a state if you are going to get into large levels of public expenditure? So privatisation has its place,” he stressed.

However, Atherley told Today’s BUSINESS what should not come with private investment was the “selling out” of Barbados and its people.

“What I don’t like whether it is foreign investment or private domestic investment is consolidation and privilege being allocated to a select few – certain names and faces recurring all the time – and then foreign investment coming in and having such dominance over the labour force that unions are just about impotent in the face of it.

“So privatisation has its place but not at the interest of selling out Barbados’ patrimony, not at the interest of sacrificing the interest of labour organisations or workers in Barbados, not in the interest of a select few who benefit to the exploitation of the majority of us.

Private capital will play its part but we cannot sell out the interest to a select few or short-term gain for political parties,” he added.

Atherley also wants to see the tourism industry developed to a point where more individuals and communities benefit, as he highlighted the need for that industry to be diversified.

“We need to, in a very broad way, make tourism more relevant to communities in Barbados . . . Tourism must touch the community level in Barbados to become more relevant. We need to diversify the product, we need to not concentrate as solely as we do on coastline tourism,” he said.
He said he also saw room for better expansion of the renewable energy sector, saying that as it is being built out this should also be democratised rather than being concentrated in the hands of a few.

“I think with respect to agriculture, we need to be more progressive, modernise the agriculture sector,” he added.

“We are still at a stage where we talk about food security. We haven’t gotten over that challenge yet.
Our food import bill is still excessively high,” said Atherley. He said his wish was to also see greater digitalisation in Barbados while allowing locals to develop the technological solutions needed.

“The world is our stage. I always like to say the sky is not the limit anymore. We can push beyond that ceiling to change the Barbadian economy. We can do it radically,” he said.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb