The National Insurance Scheme has been forced to use its investment income to pay benefits owing to Government’s half-billion-dollar debt as employer and tenant, the long-time NIS director who is now the Government’s chief economic advisor has revealed. The social security system is also holding in excess of $3.5 billion in Government paper as at […]
Author: Marlon Madden
The Central Bank today drew a roadmap towards restructuring the Government’s six-billion-dollar debt, offering to swap the vast majority of loans for new debt instruments, suggesting a haircut to creditors and stretching the length of time over which they will be repaid. It’s the best the Government can do under the circumstances, the bank suggested. […]
Prime Minister Mia Mottley has stepped in to quell a potential standoff between the fintech (financial technology) company Bitt and some commercial banks by announcing a digital currency pilot project. Mottley did not give details of the planned mobile wallet pilot project or when it would begin but gave the assurance that it would not […]
Government will slice off half of the money earmarked for the National Insurance Scheme’s Unemployment Benefits Fund to retrain public workers under the planned Retooling and Empowering and Retraining and Enfranchising (RE RE) programme come January 2019. Prime Minister Mia Mottley made this revelation on Tuesday as she addressed the second annual Bitt blockchain conference […]
Some hotels and restaurants are continuing to reap success – and farmers are smiling all the way to the bank – under a farm project financed by the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund. The $1.4 million project, which started in 2015, links micro and small business farmers to key hotel and restaurans. Under the […]
From back-to-school, the business community has gone to wait-and-see as it shifts attention to the Christmas period. While confidence seems to be slowly returning to the economy, business owners still expect it to take some time before Government’s ongoing restructuring exercises will pay off for merchants, president of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry […]
More than two dollars but less than five dollars. That appears to be the position of private operators of minbuses and route taxis ahead of talks with the Government on a proposed bus fare hike. This as the future of public transport came under the microscope on Sunday as officials identified the challenges facing the […]
Barbadians are being encouraged not to put the brakes on buying their dream car even in the face of economic uncertainty. This message has come from Managing Director for CIBC FirstCaribbean Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Donna Wellington who touted the bank’s keenness to helping residents achieve their goals. Wellington was addressing the second annual […]
The nation’s two sugar production companies, the state-owned Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC) and the private Barbados Sugar Industries Limited (BSIL), are to be merged in a public-private sector partnership, the Government has announced. The two agricultural enterprises will be among the first to be restructured under the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme […]
The Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) has declared its willingness to stand with the new Labour Party Government in an effort to breathe new life into a broken Barbados economy. But the association, led by a former tourism cabinet officer in a previous BLP administration, has said it would not stop engaging Government at […]
As Barbados prepares to enter into an International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreement, Owen Arthur is warning that sanctions from international groupings and agencies should not be ignored. The former Prime Minister has urged Barbados and the rest of the region to form alliances with international partners in an effort to effectively fight onerous rules being […]
Giving workers a piece of the ownership pie would be one route former Prime Minister Owen Arthur suggested he would take were he to return to privatization. Arthur, under whose 14-year watch two top-performing state-owned enterprises were sold to private commercial operators in Trinidad and Tobago and Bermuda, now wants to see a “high element […]
The Prime Minister has used a global forum on climate change to make a case for a change in the economic climate facing tiny island nations like Barbados on a fragile development frontline She issued a call for equity and fairness for all, as she complained to an international grouping that small developing nations continue […]
More people are vacationing in Barbados year on year but they are just not leaving enough of their spending money behind, says the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA). There have been increases in the numbers of visitors from key source markets in Britain, the United States and Canada, said BHTA CEO Rudy Grant as […]
Breaking his silence on the Mia Mottley administration’s tax measures, Owen Arthur has singled out his opposition to some of the attempts to raise money, particularly in the tourism industry. Stating that he had deliberately stayed silent on the matter for some time, and that he was not about to be critical, Arthur went on […]
Owen Arthur has suggested that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may not be entirely sold on Government’s plan to restructure state-owned enterprises while ignoring its own recommendations. In addition, the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in the 1994-2003 Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration, warned that if Government relied solely on IMF funding, Barbados could […]
The nation’s oldest hotel has partnered with the internationally acclaimed, Florida-based, Hilton Grand Vacation (HGV) on its timeshare business in a US$54.6 million deal. This makes Barbados the first location in the region where the largest luxury timeshare brand will offer timeshare weeks to owners and guests. Making the announcement on Monday during a media conference […]
