YES.On both counts.

Why not invent time travel,and go back to “de good ole days”?

Why not just turn over and go back to dreaming?

“Crabs in a bucket”
Culture of :
“I ent got it,an mek sure yuh ent get it”

Nobody in Barbados has the ability to run a Central Bank in the interest of Bajans. While we have some respect for the current Governor, personally, we judge that he recognizes the limitations a post-colonial Central Bank of Barbados faces as all its major policies are determined by the Bank of International Settlements in Basel. Given these circumstances we are restraint in our critique of the present Governor.

Courtnay Blackman on the hand pretends to be some international financial expert. An expert who raises his head every now and again to make utterances that are not dissimilar to those we’ve heard him make for more than 40 years. How could this be? Does this man live in a bygone era? Is he connected to current events? Can’t he see that the lies of his generation are coming home to roost? Does he not understand the limitations of what he calls management? And therefore the impossibility that any ‘manager’ anywhere could have increasing ability to solve existential problems.

While we agree that Barbados has been saddled from time, with bad management surely it can’t, by itself, account for the current global conditions. Bad management then, for Blackman, is but a panacea that attempts to hide the real causation of current economic maladies. Balckman is still talking about Peter Drucker – a leading management thinker of his time. We have learnt a lot from him and may he rest in peace. However, Drucker’s thinking has been exposed by circumstances that neither he nor Blackman are willing to account for.

Blackman refuses to consider the internal contradictions of economics on which current policies are based. The Drucker-Blackman thinking locates management within a sterile environment untouched by real world occurrences, the military domination of most of the world by ruthless thugs, the imposition of an unfair parity in the currency markets, the sovereign right of one country to print useless paper and force other to accept it as legal currency. A useless currency that is the medium of exchange. We could go on and on talking about other limitations like the exhaustible of resources, the possibility of a global climate disaster, and so on …No management nowhere know how to deal with these, and they never will, until we transform the underlying structure.

The Central Bank of Barbados is virtually useless when other determine money supply policy, exchange parity, insist on the abandonment of national interests for ‘global’ interests. We can say that the Bank has not been an instrument for ‘development’ but certainly it has been a perennial political tool.

@Pachamama
Yuh did come up wid ALL DAT in a smidgin dat I tek wid muh little Shite!!
Yuh is superwoman.

We believe that a $100 million Fund should be immediately set up, to jump start small businesses.

Fund Access, RDC, UDC, EGFL and guarantee schemes in the Central Bank add up to? Small businesses in what? Entrepreneurial colleges?

@enuff

The issue is not the availability of Funds but the criteria to lend to actors in the Cultural Industries which make those funds relatively easy to access given the nature of the business.

@ David

Thank you! So do we need a new fund or the way we perceive funding start-ups (ask BAFBFP).?

Agree with you Enuff but it calls for the MoF/government to amend the legislation which govern the available vehicles. In fact it is some thing our venerable Governor of the Central Bank can recommend.

The amount of grants that have come out of Europe in the hundreds of millions to billions for small island states to develop themselves over the last 50 years has helped along the way…………….i am sure some of that free money found it’s way into the pockets of politicians and their yardfowls………..this is probably the best time to have grants available for ailing businesses, cause i know money still comes out of Europe in the form of grants.

@Hants

Any strong export thrust must be supported by a solid domestic market.

“.i hope the money is still sitting there, and no one has made off with it”
**********
LOL Ha Ha Ha. Rofl…hee hee

Wunna folks does really mek a lotta sport hear…?

How on God’s earth would it be possible for there to be MILLIONS of dollars sitting in available funds in Barbados for wont of someone completing paperwork…?

Look! That money is ‘there’ because it was loaned/ granted/ advanced by various international agencies for various noble purposes which all sound good enough on paper……things like
– alternative energy
– educational development
– small business development and support
– greening and solid waste management
– water mains replacement
– gender equalization

….and such sweet sounding projects.

THAT IS WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY TO GET THE MONEY.
Wuh wunna think that world Bank or CDB gwine lend we $M 10 so Freundel could hire a lotta folks to weed bush hall, or pay salaries to a bunch of do-nothing government workers, or fuh a AX commission of inquiry into miserable women?

Um is just like a lot of those folks who went shopping for reggae on the hill…a lot of dem tell the Credit Union that they want to buy school books for their children, fix the flooring in the kitchen or tile the shower….dum ain’t say that they want Remy… and ringside tickets..

Of course as soon as the loan funding is paid to govern it is immediately spent on something REALLY important ….like luxury SUVs for everyone from government messengers to every statutory senior staff…
….Wuh obviously they HAVE to pretend that the approved projects are still on, …after all they will be applying for new loans for “alternative energy” shortly….Ha Ha. 🙂 …let Bushie see the fella who could qualify for a small business loan LOL Ha Ha … BAFFY ya joke!!

Wait fuh dat money….

Did I just read that someone, was it you Bushie, No it was Well Well, asking what Bajans were doing about exporting, and pointing out the Jamaican products that are sold up here? I have been pushing this, arguing with people back home, cajoling and encouraging our people to get into the export market. Up to yesterday I went into Harry’s and bought a couple packages of Eclipse Biscuits (except these are now produced in Trinidad). Our sugar can be packaged in small bags and sold here. Having bought and experienced (using it is an experience) Demerara Brown Sugar, and the Tastless “white sugar” I have no doubt that Barbados sugar caqn be sold as a specialty sugar. It is the best and should be marketed as such. We can enter the export market but our products have to be marketed aggresively.

My nose bitin’ me… somebody talkin’ my name…

Let me just clear one thing up about the self employed… there two types, TWO TYPES;

– one that is forced to be entrepreneurial as a result of the nature of his offering
– the other that is just plain entrepreneurial by nature, and would do just about anything to turn a dollar.

The two are NOT to be lumped together under ANY circumstances.

The Central Bank keeps academics employed … what else are they supposed to …? Bre’k in people’s houses? I say right on to them (after all I know alotta dem and I only want for them the best 🙂 )

In light of some very outlandish figures, statistics and other concoctions that have come out of the Central Bank of Barbados and that have gone out for public consumption in Barbados and beyond, at various times in the recent past in the country, and of reports of clashes between the Central Bank of Barbados and the Barbados Statistical Service over some of those same figures, statistics and other concoctions, and which have had the illfortune of bringing the Central Bank’s research and data information processes into disrepute, and which have – from those times until now – led to the questioning by some members of the public of the entire integrity, credibility and reputation of this once very important public institution, the PDC will again ask many members of the Barbadian public to demand of the government that it – without haste – sets up a Commission of Enquiry into some of the Central Bank’s operations and administrations.

PDC

David
here is the process. The client is expected to provide the usual… you know, business plan, spread sheets (projections and sensitivity) and interfaces with very nice accommodating field officers. These officers are proficient to the point of advising where the client may be deficient and how improvements can be made. I like them all, they are sincere operatives (the same is true of ALL the small business units of the commercial banks). These operatives are charged with packaging the proposals for presentation to the Boards. The presentations are done by the CEO’s, not the field officers, and most certainly not the client until he is invited. The of the CEO’s comes into play as it is they and they alone, that determine which projects go through for board consideration, and which ones don’t.

With the commercial banks neither the branch manager nor the small business manager has the power to authorize a business loan of ANY size. They can authorize Personal loans of up to $400,000, but not one cent towards business development. These types of decisions now done by invisible faces behind closed doors.

Is the problem clearer?

@ David
Consolidated Fund?
…you mean the treasury? ….that illusionary place where we money is kept? …the one managed by politicians like O$A, Thompson and now Sinckler?
Ha Ha LOL

Skippa, what do you not get about hand to mouth?…..pay check to pay check?

The ‘consolidated fund’ is like the fellow who can only write a cheque when his salary goes on the bank……often the cheque beats the salary to the bank…
Those international loans and grants are like loans from the credit union to a small man for “debt consolidation”.
Any ‘development’ scheme funded by the Barbados treasury is a sham.

@ BAFBFP
Pray tell us why you would expect that foreign owned banks would facilitate locals investing in BUSINESS? …you think the people foolish?
Shiite man….that would be like asking the old Plantation owners to provide free education to the slaves…

Wunna people does can’t take a hint though…? Those put to administer these funds are there to PREVENT wunna from humbugging the foreign people – while making it look like um is wunna fault…and at the same time harvesting any good ideas that wunna may freely provide from time to time….

THEY RIGHT! ….wunna Brass Bowls!
Wunna got over a billion dollars in savings in Credit Unions and in the same foreign owned banks which wunna HAND OVER to the same foreigners to manage….and then gone back begging them to borrow some…

The very epitome of ignorance….

The main issue is with the two CEO’s. They CANNOT be moved, even the boards lack the necessary courage that it will take to challenge them. The Boards see that the bottom lines are always in the black and that is sufficient, everyone is happy, (save for the types of ppl that the Cabinet Ministers and Central Bank Govs frequently refer to in public as to what is needed)

What is there to respond to Baffy?
..you are clearly awaiting the day when outsiders see it fit to facilitate our just demands for developmental loans… Hell will freeze first..

Caswell too…
He awaiting the day when the authorities recognize that Credit Unions can operate as banks and get involved in such developmental areas rather than just consumer loans.

Pushy Bushie would have started a local Credit Union Bank long time ago and taken control of this whole scam….

David
The GoCB is very aware… but again powerless to do much. Make no mistake, the public personalities are well meaning and, believe it or not, sincere, but they are not the ones making the key decisions. The Fed Reserve in the US is expected to break even every year… ie NOT show a profit. Why the hell should Fund Access and EGFL not be treated likewise?

To be honest I am so opposed to the two CEO’s that a comment that points to their inability to operate in the environment as defined by you is very easy for me to make. Barbados may fare better with them off the scene but then one will be faced with the appropriate replacements.

Pachamama | April 29, 2013 at 6:47 PM |
“Nobody in Barbados has the ability to run a Central Bank in the interest of Bajans.”

Mark Carney is the Governor of the Bank of Canada. Carney spent thirteen years with Goldman Sachs in its London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto offices. His progressively more senior positions included co-head of sovereign risk; executive director, emerging debt capital markets; and managing director, investment banking. He worked on South Africa’s post-apartheid venture into international bond markets, and was involved in Goldman’s work with the 1998 Russian financial crisis. On November 26, 2012, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, (MOF) announced the appointment of Mark Carney as the next Governor of the Bank of England. Carney is expected to assume the position on July 1, 2013 for what is officially an eight-year term.

So, if the British can look beyond its shores and hire someone from one of the colonies to head up its Central Bank, why can Barbados not look beyond its shores for a qualified person to head up its Central Bank without political interference.

This may seem a foreign concept to the Government, like “the tail wagging the dog”; but surely it beats having a “lapdog”.

Hants | April 29, 2013 at 8:35 PM |
“It is time to copy what the Jamaicans are doing. mainstream supermarkets in Canada sell Jamaican pumpkin,hot peppers and yellow yam to name a few.The best coconut water sold in Canada is from Jamaica.Sold frozen solid.”
Where do you find the frozen coconut water, Niceys? I stock up on the Grace coconut water (a product of Thailand) in cans when they are on sale for 99 cents at the supermarkets.

The whole principle behind venture capital is risk – a word that is anathema in Barbados. EGFL and Fund Access are government-run operations, a fact that renders them dead in the starting blocks. In order for a business to start up, it has to take a risk, and that risk has to be financed by someone else ready to take the risk with them. The whole thing about risk, is that somebody stands to lose, and it happens often with new business start-ups. That is why venture capital has to be private, where wealthy individuals or firms risk part of their fortunes in the chance that their fortune might be considerably enhanced if the business is successful. BUT they are also prepared to lose and walk away if it doesn’t work. No person working for government on a fat monthly pay check will be prepared to take that risk, and in some cases, they are not prepared to see someone more successful than them. So they invent an unscalable paper wall, which eliminates risk, because no one is prepared to take it on. So they’re safe – and the next fat paycheck is there at the end of the month. And that’s the way it is in Barbados 2013………