The Government of Barbados has just signed two more loan deals meant to help Barbados’ economy grow.
This was revealed by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, as she spoke during the opening ceremony of the Annual Consultation with Caribbean Governors, which was hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) at the Hilton Resort, Thursday evening.
“The two loans that we just signed could not have been signed without the serious work of structuring out what would be done, both as preconditions to those loans as well as now the execution of them to modernise the Barbados public service with $40 million USD that would allow us to move ministry to ministry to ministry to not only reconstruct the rules, but to digitise where possible and to make it possible for the average Barbadian company or citizen to access records and access services in a serious way,” she said.
The Prime Minister continued, “The $30 million USD that we just signed for with the smart energy allows us to be able to leverage renewable energy on many of Governments properties. The Government of Barbados is
spending about $400 million USD a year on the importation of fuel at a time when the geopolitics of the world threatens to increase that amount because we don’t know when how or where we might have to now face a scarcity of supply and an increase in prices because of a decisions being taken elsewhere that might not always match the application of knowledge or wisdom.”
The Prime Minister went on to note that things such as climate change and the like were having a negative impact on the performance of our economy, and the capacity of the economy to be resilient.
And moving forward, it is her hope that the IDB provides financial assistance to be able to drill down on these issues to find solutions and be able to meet the concerns of the population.(CLJB)