Weekly Column

One well-known DLP supporter was heard to say recently that it is like Chinese water torture – first it was the increase in licenses and gasoline, then Land Tax went up, next water rates skyrocketed, food prices are still high, and now electricity and telephone rates are about to go up too.

To add insult to injury some unfortunate Bajans still have not received their Income Tax returns or their Reverse Tax Credits. Things are worse than tight and the Government is holding on to money legitimately owed to working class Barbadians. What is really going on this country?

The answer without being unkind, lies in the inability of the Prime Minister and his Ministers in the key economic ministries like tourism, international business, manufacturing and agriculture to grasp the issues and grapple with them. It is now clear that their concept of economic management is drawn from a muddy, whirlpool of conflicting ideas that bear little or no relation to the problems they are trying to solve. There is no strategy to promote growth in the economy – full-stop.

Their record thus far is testimony to this: rising unemployment, high cost of living, seriously depleted foreign reserves, a widening fiscal deficit, increasing national debt, contracting social services and the list keeps growing every day. Unfortunately, Bajans are the guinea pigs in their high stakes game of Russian roulette.

On top of all their broken Manifesto promises, the DLP now has the gall to ask public workers to suffer the indignity of a wage freeze because of the Prime Minister’s incompetence in the management of our economic affairs. The irony is that it would only take a net addition of $24 million to give the public servants a 3% wage increase that will allow them to keep up with this year’s estimate of inflation.

We cannot say we are surprised, even though we wish for the sake of our citizens that it was not so. It is said that history repeats itself. No one expected it to repeat itself so soon and with such startling accuracy.

Sixteen years ago, a freshman Minister of Finance was given the opportunity to bring leadership to the economic affairs of this country. Sixteen years later David Thompson’s modus operandi has not changed and we will be the poorer for it. There can be little doubt now, based on the evidence, that the job is too big for him.

No matter the almost insulting entreaty from his Deputy, Freundel Stuart that all recessions eventually come to an end, we Bajans expect our Minister of Finance to be proactive and take the necessary steps to protect us as best he can.

The present holder of the office has by his own admission surrendered to a baffling “wait and see approach” that defies all reason.

It is clear that with no original thought likely to emanate from Bay Street, we are once more subject to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund’s economic prescriptions.

Anyone who has read the Fund’s Article IV Report can see that it has become David Thompson’s To Do List and the best we can expect is further implementation of the Report in the upcoming Budget.

Our Leader, Mia Mottley warned of this months ago, just as she warned Thompson in 2008 that his policies were ill conceived and would cause the economy to stagnate and again in 2009 that he was underestimating government’s revenue, which would lead to a larger fiscal deficit than he was predicting.

Miss Mottley has demonstrated repeatedly that she has a much clearer grasp of the issues and the way that our economy functions.

Would that those who now seek to make a political football of the Oppositions right to offer alternatives to the wage freeze remember her cautions to the Government.
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