PM to business: invest in your country

Prime Minister Mia Mottley has urged the business community to look inward when it comes to growing an economy that includes all Barbadians.

“If anybody here has the capacity to help us turn the corner to ensure that our growth is inclusive, it is the people in this room,” she told the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) during its annual luncheon and discussion at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.

In a 90-minute speech, she urged the business leaders to focus on the six tenets outlined in the Mission-Oriented Strategy for Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth in Barbados, authored by economist Professor Mariana Mazzucato, which the government has published in conjunction with the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and the Social Partnership.

The government’s mission-oriented strategy for economic transformation, announced in May, is a roadmap for Barbados’ inclusive growth and sustainable development that takes a whole-of-government approach to build the public sector’s capabilities, design mission-oriented policy tools and institutions, engage the Barbadian public, and renew the social contract between the government, labour and industry.

Mottley told the audience of the island’s leading business executives and entrepreneurs that Barbados was at a stage where inclusive growth – growth which encompassed those at the lower end of society – was necessary. She noted that if this did not happen, Barbados could find itself in a position similar to many of its neighbours in the past.

“The spectacle. . . which has started to befall us, in terms of social implosion and the prevalence of violence and guns, can become more of our reality,” she warned.

“But there is one problem – you have to turn up, and you have to turn up equally for investment. The country has many initiatives before us, but in almost every instance, the source of the funds and the nationality of the funds are looking less and less Barbadian and more and more foreign . . . . What is the hope for our future?”

The prime minister declared that apparent foreign domination of investment was taking place while more than $14 billion in domestic savings was sitting in the banks.

She explained the government’s mission-oriented strategy is a “win-win” pathway to national development that also gives Barbadians the opportunity to both support and benefit from development.

Mottley suggested now was not the time to simply have extra cash but to reinvest in the country’s development.

“If you don’t invest back in this country, tell me who will?” she asked. “This conversation in here today is to give us a wake call that investment will come and investment must come. But the investment must come not just from outside Barbados, it must come from within.  The reality is that there are some bugbears that need to [be got] over, separate from what the government must do institutionally.”

She said that institutional work had begun with the establishment of a unit trust, repurposing and restructuring the Enterprise Growth Fund Limited (EGFL) “so that it becomes more responsive”. The EGFL, which was intended to be an equity financier, had managed a number of funds in the past but was more passive, she said, declaring that more aggressive tactics were now needed to invest in businesses beyond debt financing.

“There are too many companies that continue to rely on debt financing alone without understanding that equity financing and mezzanine financing are absolutely critical in order for us to move forward,” Mottley said. “Part of the difficulty is . . . the declining population and, therefore, the declining number of players – both as investors but also as managers and technical people.”

This, she suggested, required greater openness of Barbadians to the influx of skilled workers “to move a wide swath of projects over the next few years”.

She said: “The country has to open up in order to be able to ensure that in the same way we are prepared to accept foreign investment, we also need additional skills to help us manage.”

Mottley also briefly noted the long absence of a Barbados development bank. The defunct BDB which became insolvent 40 years ago after making bad loans to private sugar mills and planters was replaced by the Barbados National Bank (BNB) which was later sold to Republic Bank.

But the prime minister said: “We don’t want to invest again in a huge monolithic structure that will see the monies being allocated more to administration and profits rather than facilitated into where matters most.” (RG)