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Speaking recently at the launch of a new international business charter at the Sherbourne Conference centre, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Affairs and Development, Mia Mottley, announced that the new charter would see business time-frames tightened with applications being processed within days and work permits completed in weeks.

She went on to say: " We have managed to reach a situation where the Immigration Department has agreed that it would process a long-term work permit within the international business sector within two weeks, equally it would process short-term work permits generally within two weeks and all other long-term work permits within four weeks.'

Mottley's announcement would have been welcomed news to several businessmen who would be familiar with the frustration of having to suspend the start- up of a project while they await the approval of applications submitted to the Immigration Department and other government agencies.

Only recently Barbadians witnessed a situation where a delay in the approval of applications for work permits led to the investors having to put on hold the initial phase of construction of a major hotel on the west coast.

In a globalised world the emphasis is now on speed, since other jurisdictions are always ready to roll out the red carpet for foreign investors.

An investor may have drawn up a business plan to capture a market only to have it frustrated by a civil servant who revels in his self-importance by drawing out a simple process.

In a world that has been flattened with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the local bureaucracy can no longer function as they did in the colonial period when Barbados functioned on the periphery of the world's economic system. The technological revolution has created a global village.

Addressing the issue of time-frames, Friedman noted that a study had shown that it took a mere two days to start a business in Australia, but 203 days in Haiti and 215 days in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

He further pointed out that there were no monetary costs to start a new business in Denmark, but it costs more than five times income per capita in Cambodia and over thirteen times in Sierra Leone.

Therefore in announcing a new international business charter, Minister Mottley sought to bring Barbados in line with other countries in a globalised world. The choice is clear: We either speed up our processes or fail in our effort to attract foreign investment.
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