BERT a ‘success’

The International Monetary Fund-backed Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation programme – BERT – has been declared a success by the Prime Minister a year after it was introduced.

Speaking at the Sustainable Energy Conference on Wednesday, she acknowledged that some measures were not implemented in a timely manner, but insisted that some things would take longer than others.

Mottley said: “I marvel sometimes at the shortness of our memories, of the unreasonableness of our perspective.

“We are not having an IMF programme because the Government chooses that this is where we want to be.

“Yesterday was the first anniversary of the programme and we have met every target while still trying to keep the social fabric of this country together.

“The things we have not been able to deal with are things that are part and parcel of a process of time.

“The digitization of the Barbadian public service doesn’t happen overnight. It is not an abracadabra moment.”

Barbados entered into an austerity-funded programme with the IMF last October in an effort to fix severe economic difficulties that threatened the fixed exchange rate of the Barbados dollar.

Following its approval of the BERT programme, the IMF provided a stand-by facility of nearly $600 million (US$290 million), of which two tranches of about $100 million (US$49 million) have already been disbursed.

Under the programme, more than 1,000 public sector workers were retrenched and some state agencies were merged. Government is still in the process of its retooling, enfranchising, retraining and empowerment aspect of the programme, as well as the digitisation of public sector processes.

She promised that within two years, Barbadians should have a “hassle-free environment within which to function to access services in Government”.

The Prime Minister also boasted of healthy foreign exchange reserves.

Mottley said: “Every morning I am reminded what our reserves are, and happily so for us, our reserves stand at three times what they were when we inherited the Government a year ago. Our reserves are $1.225 billion today.”

Barbados’ international reserves position had fallen to an all-time low of $482 million, or just under eight weeks of import cover in November 2017, before slightly increasing to $577.1 million, or 7.4 weeks of import cover by the end of September last year.

Beside the injections from the IMF under the Extended Fund Facility, loans of $150 million from the Caribbean Development Bank and $200 million from the Inter-American Development were made towards the end of last year.

Shortly after coming to power, the Mottley administration in May 2018 suspended all debt payments. While an agreement was struck with domestic holders of public debt, leaving them with a hefty haircut and a lengthened repayment period, overseas creditors are yet to reach an agreement.
marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb