Barbados needs to turn negatives into positives and trend upwards in the right indices to the benefit of this island without borrowing more and adding more debt on the backs of Bajans.
In a sit down interview with Loop News, the leader of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), Dr Ronnie Yearwood says that Bajans are struggling with the cost of living. Responding to a question posed about the response of Bajans to the unusual end-of-the-month fuel price adjustment notice, Yearwood said that when you look at fuel locally there even more costly questions to ask.
All the measures that we should be coming down in, we’re going up in
“The change in fuel prices is one thing and you can accept that there is a change in fuel prices, but what has me as a reality, is that Barbados has one of the most expensive fuel prices in the world.”
He said this is not something that Barbados needs or should want to be number one in.
In fact, he challenged, “In all the measurements for this country, the wrong measurements, we keep going upwards. We have one of the most expensive fuels. Recently, I understand that we climbed up one point to now become the third most expensive place to live.
Where is the money going?
“All the measures that we should be coming down in, we’re going up in, and all the measures we should going up in, we’re coming down. For example, the Human Development Index, Barbados just dropped I think 19 or 20 places, that means that the quality of life in Barbados is dropping, that means that you are working for less money, that means your money is not buying what it used to buy say five, six, ten, even 15 years ago.”
He says that there has been a change in our standard of living, there is now a higher cost of living, “add to that the government is raking in large sums of money in fuel.”
He pinpointed that fuel tax alone amounts to some $284million, then he contended the government gets funds from the excise tax and the Value Added Tax (VAT) as well. “You’ve got a whole set of other taxes in there, add that to the $284 or so million, plus the $300million loan, plus the other $250million loan, we have almost about a billion dollars available to the government to deal with road repairs and other things.
“Where is the money going?
“How are we seeing value for this money?”
An economist and lawyer, Yearwood said that not enough is being said about repaying each loan which he labelled as “delayed taxes”. He said, “a loan is just a delayed tax ’cause if you don’t get growth to pay it back you have to find a way to pay it back.” And he pushed to side the argument that the loans garnered are at low interest rates. The DLP-Head pushed back saying, “It doesn’t matter that the government is out there – ‘Oh, we’re getting loans at one or two per cent!’, One or two per cent does not matter. Somebody got to pay it back! And the reality is it won’t be the people who have gone out there and borrowed the money, because when they’re borrowing that money, it’s not the government money, that’s our money. They borrowed on our behalf. We are the ones who are saddled with a debt of over one billion dollars at this current moment and a debt of over $4million in the cycle of this government.”
