New Immigration policy on the cards

Prime Minister Mia Mottley says addressing the question of how to increase Barbados’ population will be critical to achieving the kind of sustained economic growth the island requires.

And to this end, she says a major overhaul of the country’s immigration policy is coming in a matter of months. This was revealed Monday as the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance delivered her first Budgetary Proposals since the island’s economy was severely undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

Describing the situation as a “population deficit”, Mottley insisted that Barbados needed to fix its “population issues” as there was a need to have more young people working to support the island’s economic system, noting the linkages to much-needed pension reform.

According to the Prime Minister a recently commissioned study led by Dr Roberta Clarke, indicated that unless addressed, Barbados’ current work force will be smaller in 12 years than it is now. In this connection, she said Minister of Home Affairs, Information and Public Affairs, Wilfred Abrahams,   will be bringing a bill to Parliament to review the island’s immigration policy.

Addressing another policy initiative, Prime Minister Mottley said now that visitors were returning to the island in significant numbers, the administration will turn its attention to how recipient entities will repay state funds they secured though the Barbados Employment and Sustainable Transformation (BEST) programme.

That initiative provided about $300 million in funding to the tourism sector that allowed tourism-based entities to re-engage over 2 000 tourism workers and to maintain their properties during the pandemic. (IMC1)