#BTColumn – A republic in deficit

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

By Ralph Jemmott

On December 2022 frequent letter writer Cyprian La Touche penned a sentence that caught my attention. He stated: “I am struck by how stuck we are as a country and stubbornly refusing to actually, and once and for all, fix, bring resolution and closure to certain problems.” He concluded: “It’s clear that sometimes it’s all about spinning tops in mud and everybody moving fast in circles, going absolutely nowhere.” 

I am not sure that all human problems can ever be ‘fixed’ given  that as one sage once said, “nothing straight can ever be created out of the crooked time of humanity”. The Good Book itself states, “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.” 

Politics is defined as the management of human affairs and we elect politicians with the expectation that they will reasonably manage the affairs of state with some degree of efficacy and competence. Of course governments, incompetent, corrupt and self-seeking can themselves become part of the problem. Conversely governments who adhere to the ‘virtue’ of politics and the politics of ‘virtue’ can bring untold benefits to a country. In some regards Barbadians have been
fortunate. Generally speaking, we have not been exposed to the more egregious facets of dictatorial, incompetent and kleptocratic governance. 

The problem often is that the issues we confront, the concerns  that Cyprian LaTouche would have us resolve are systemic and deeply imbedded in the culture. They do not give way to the chatter of charlatans and ideologues, particularly now that the wiser thinking adults have left the building.   

Unquestionably one prime concern is our obvious struggle to pay our way in the world, to earn the foreign currency to pay the things we import and the  currency to pay local bills. We have resorted to deficit financing and foreign borrowing on a scale that must prove challenging unless we can uncover some new source of wealth, mineral or otherwise.

Depending on one’s innate sense of optimism or pessimism one can feel differently about Barbados’ economic future.  The optimistic perspective is that the deficit is manageable and the debt sustainable. The obdurate facts are that we are incurring considerable deficit and debt at a time when the prospects of earning massive amounts of foreign exchange are limited. 

The mid-year Budget Review for the period April to September 2022 produced by the Ministry of Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment stated that The Barbados government was facing a $379 million budget deficit in the latter half of its current financial year with debts totalling $500 million in that time span. The international benchmark for debt to GDP is around 60 per cent.
At that mark, it is considered reasonably manageable. It is estimated that some $163 million would have to be transferred to the Barbados Revenue Authority to pay arrears to taxpayers in the same period. Just before Christmas Minister Ryan Straughn regretted that the government was unable to pay out all income tax refunds because it was “cash-strapped”.

Tourism is still Barbados’ best bet. Tom Standage, Deputy Editor of the Economist in his text “Recession Looming: The World ahead in 2023” thinks that global tourism will rebound to pre-pandemic levels. Barbados must cash in on that possibility in an area in which it still has a comparative advantage.   

Economic and financial deficits are one thing but psycho-social and socio-cultural deficits are another. We inhabit an economy, buying and selling. But we also inhabit a society, rubbing shoulders with people every day. As a people we have known poverty before. There have always been pockets of extreme want in Barbados, even when as elsewhere in the region it was not marked by shanty-towns and extensive slum dwelling. However, the level of societal decay is something relatively new to most Barbadians. Drive-by shootings, apparent gangland style executions, car-jackings, robberies, lawyers ‘tiefing’, public corruption, schools in turmoil, absence of common empathy, envy, spite and bad mindedness. ‘Yuh doan’ know who to trust in a society where according to the late Oliver Jackman, trust once held us together. 

During his presidency Bill Clinton observed that “violent crime and the fear it provokes are crippling our society, limiting personal freedom and fraying the ties that bind us”. The same can be said of today’s Barbados. Now everybody is suspect, given the kind of people that we are becoming. Given these deficits, it is doubtful that Barbados can advance a truly ‘transformational’ agenda in any meaningful sense of the word. The Barbados government has launched “Operation Restore Order”. Commissioner of Police Richard Boyce recently stated the ‘Operation’ will run “well into the New Year”. This has been accompanied by some seemingly stringent and appropriate reforms to the Firearms Act.

However, the restoration of Law and Order in Barbados cannot be reduced simply to curbing gun crime, although that is unquestionably   the most severe example of our societal decay. It must address issues of reckless driving on our roads, going through traffic lights, the vulgar insidious music on public transport, flying ‘staked–out’ kites all hours of the day or night, road-side garages and the disposal of personal and industrial  garbage. Let me repeat the La Touche quote. “I am struck by how stuck we are as a country in stubbornly refusing to actually and once and for all bring restoration and closure to certain problems.”

Ralph Jemmott is a respected retired educator.