MINISTER in the Ministry of Finance, Ryan Straughn, has given the assurance that the Government is continuing to closely monitor the performance of the country’s revenue and expenditure.
His comments came yesterday as he led off the debate on the Appropriation (Amendment) Bill 2020 in the Lower Chamber where he further assured that there is financing available to take the country to the end of the financial year “comfortably” with respect to the predicted shortfall in revenue.
According to Minister Straughn, “I must say to you that having gone through this exercise, it is incumbent upon Barbados that when we presented to the Social Partnership the context in which we will be operating this financial year, I am pleased to report that up until now, we are on track to, and this is all things equal, to do better than what we would have initially anticipated.”
He explained that the changes in the Bill reflect the recent reorganisation of Ministries. “But as we have done over the last six months, we suspended some of the sub-programmes and focused more on what we needed to do to keep people safe.
“We will continue to ensure that we put Barbados in a position that we can cover as quickly as possible going forward and therefore, these amendments to the Appropriation Bill reflect some of the more immediate needs that are required at this particular time and therefore in that vein the Government continues to monitor on a daily basis, with respect to our fiscal performance.
“We are still very much committed to ensuring that the Government fundamental response to people, that that is as strong as we can deliver in this environment and that too will continue to be monitored and where resources are required to ramp up, then we will ramp up those resources to ensure that nobody is left behind in this country.”
Straughn noted that the Ministry of Health and Wellness has been responding to the changes that were required as the country continues to deal with the public health threat of COVID-19. “Therefore, as a result, we continue to make additional resources available to the Ministry of Health with respect to the ongoing management of the pandemic and to ensure that we can first and foremost keep Barbadians safe as we go ahead and reopen the economy with respect to the imposition of certain protocols.”
He urged Barbadians to take a sense of personal responsibility for their actions. “Because if we all do what we are supposed to do, then we will be able to keep the economy open. We will be able to maintain livelihoods in this environment and reduce in a sense the pressure of the Government to respond more directly in terms of the intervention for social protection,” he said.
“...It is critical that every Barbadian plays their part. So that the Government can focus on ensuring that we can keep families in this country whole, that we can have as many businesses stay open, and that we can employ people and equally to maintain a level of social and economic activity in this country in this important time.”
He stressed that this has not been an easy exercise. “There are challenges every day, Sir, that we have to respond to and there are challenges domestically, internationally, given a number of negative references that we have received in recent time from namely the EU (European Union), but we are not deterred by that because we have given the commitment to Barbadians that we will fight for them and we will continue to ensure that we defend the in-terest of Barbados.
“It is important especially now in this pandemic that we understand that a government has to respond on multiple fronts and that the response is multifaceted and therefore, whilst this is a Bill about dollars and cents, the reality, Sir, is that the allocation and reallocation of any expenditure as we had sought to do and you would have heard in the Throne Speech, a number of initiatives which were designed to respond to the people of Barbados in terms of the immediate short-term needs. But equally as we continue with some of the transformational efforts to turn Barbados around.
“And therefore it is not simply dollars and cents, but equally it is to ensure that people in this country and that a number of businesses, small businesses, medium businesses and even some large businesses, that they too can stay afloat and continue to employ people because that is required now to ensure that we can maintain a stable economic environment in the context of the pandemic,” he said.