Bankers Association optimistic ahead of Budget

The Barbados Bankers Association is expressing optimism ahead of Monday’s Budget presentation.

Speaking on behalf of the Association, CIBC’s Managing Director for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Donna Wellington said they are pleased with the improvements in the economy.

Wellington outlined three major areas the Association hopes will be implemented to support economic growth. She said with the implementation of these initiatives, the Association believes the Barbados economy can grow even more.

Housing is the first area highlighted by the Association.

“We see confidence in the economy by virtue of the pent up demand for low-end to high-end residential mortgages, which we have been approving and funding,” Wellington said.

“Regarding our partners who are all of the stakeholders in the closure process (legal, registry etc), what we hope for is to collaborate in shortening this process as compared to our peers around the region, and as close as the Eastern Caribbean, we see mortgages closing in a week to a month where here in Barbados we are typically between four to six months.”

On the issue of commercial deals, Wellington said the Association is also seeing very large pipelines in the commercial space in a range of industries — hospitality, construction, manufacturing, distribution, etc.

“Here again we approve these loans and stand ready to fund but there always seems to be some issue delaying funding which we are all eager to do,” she said.

“The issues are wide and varied but all of the stakeholders need to collaborate in shortening this process both in the public and private sector.”

On the topic of Renewable Energy, the Association noted that there is more than $500 million in projects.

Wellington said there is real and licence-approved demand for solar projects, which the Association is eager to fund and all of it is currently stalled due to the battery storage.

“Once fixed, this will unlock the solar energy revolution in Barbados. The bottlenecks for us are the regulatory process with the issuing of tariffs to support battery storage for smaller systems, which currently is unbankable and we also need clarity on the competitive procurement process, which is quite complex and isn’t getting us there in the short term,” she said.

“We want the government to help the private sector to find an immediate solution so our clients can get moving on investing in storage. The sooner these bottlenecks, which are delaying deployment of capital in this area are fixed, the sooner the banks will happily fund them. All in all the Banks stand ready to finance the growth in the private sector.”