A member of the BU community posed the question to the blogmaster via private message – “Where does the average Bajan INVEST today- now?”.
There is a quick answer. There is a complex answer. The blogmaster is not qualified to address the complex answer, however, members of the BU family are free to fill the gap.
The question was influenced against the backdrop of government’s retrenchment exercise and should include private sector employees where similar retrenchment programs have been occurring in the post 2008 period.
Before the question posed can be answered it is important to understand how savings and investment differ. In simple terms individual savings is the difference between income earned – a salary – minus CONSUMPTION expenditure e.g. car, food, entertainment etc. To clarify, if the individual purchases an Aquaponics system (to produce food) we should define this as an INVESTMENT expenditure. The investment expenditure reduces household cost and creates a revenue opportunity.
The most recent Financial Stability Report page 20 produced by the Central Bank confirmed what we know, Barbadian individuals and other entities continue to save in the financial system. Some dismiss the high level of savings to Barbadians being risk averse others will counter by suggesting that we should consider other determinants. The blogmaster will leave this part of the debate to the BU intelligentsia except to say. Traditional investment opportunities are limited in Barbados and BLACK Barbadians especially have confused saving with the bank or credit union as an investment.
Source: 2017 Financial Stability Report
This blog is not meant to denigrate Barbadians. However, it is accurate to say that the financial IQ of Barbadians combined with a passive entrepreneurial disposition has defined our investment outlook. Some members of the BU family will point to how the education system has been designed in a post colonial period that has led to our state of mind.
To answer the question posed by the member (he is free to expose himself). Even in the so called ‘good times’ the investment market in Barbados can be accurately described as closed. Bear in mind the blogmaster does not consider individual savings in financial institutions as investment. Where are locals – those being displaced by government – able to invest money to generate meaningful income that is not illiguid? There is no active equity market. There is Fortress Fund and a couple other mutual funds that show moderate ROIs. You get the picture!
Earlier in the blog BLACK was capitalized for a reason. It was not meant to be an incendiary verbal, simply to differentiate how Blacks and minority groups approach investing in the same local market. For years minority groups have established Pooled Investment Funds. In a simple definition, an opportunity is identified and a group of individuals come together based on a shared position to invest in the idea and agree to share the risk. The idea maybe to buy property to rent or flip, acquire an equity stake in an under capitalized business, transport an emerging business concept from offshore to local market … you get the picture. The more sophisticated investment is that a few pension funds managers act as loan sharks. Is this activity regulated? A blog for another day. However it must be said that all investments bear risk!
The upside to what is happening to displaced workers in Barbados it that it may serve to disrupt a passive state of mind. This is where the national conversation needs to be anchored instead of the old way thinking. It is time to change the thinking.
The economic crisis started under George W. Bush. Obama put it back on a sound footing. Trump is riding OBAMA’S WAVE.
Artax, bring the facts again for this Trumpian in ALL respects. Why do you persist in obvious lies? As former Republican Joe Scarborough says , “USE YOUR GOOGLE MACHINE. THE STATISTICS ARE THERE PUBLISHED ON GOVERNMENT SITES.”
Now you are implying that everything was better fifty years ago when the majority of black Bajans could not eat a proper breakfast! What kind of state is Greece in? How about Italy? Who is running their economies?
And you Piece want me to stop calling this stuff out?
@Lawson
You really should not advertise so widely that you know absolutely nothing about economics… it’s embarrassing. On the off chance that you might want to learn something from an actual coservative publication, check out:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/10/30/two-charts-show-trumps-job-gains-are-just-a-continuation-from-obamas-presidency/?
conservative^
when you swim through sewage to get chicken at the kfc you should not pontificate about anything. I know enough about economics that I don’t have to step and fetch for a living. Just because he is the same color as you doesn’t automatically make him right Clinton was the same color as me and I thought he was wrong
@Lawson
It has nothing to do with skin color, just the facts… the plain unvarnished truth. If you can’t understand the arithmetic you should probably stop embarrassing yourself on a public forum. If you do think you understand the arithmetic look at the graphs and explain your point of view in plain English.
@PLT
Thanks for sharing that link.
It is good to see what others are thinking and saying.
Your buddy has been a great salesman I ain’t buying it. Obama and Barbadian holder has devided America. Thank god there mess is getting cleaned up Trump has stabalized the courts for the next 30 years and when he replaces rbg maybe 40 his greatest achievement it’s pretty sad to hear Obama claim all this stuff that is happening is because of him when all his party has been voting against everything
I do not agree with everything Obama did. I think he made some errors in his foreign policy with respect to Libya, Syria and Yemen. Obama was not the messiah. I do not belong to an Obama cult where he can do no wrong. You and your fellow Trumpians however, cannot name ONE POINT on which you disagree with your cult leader! In the minds of all sane and intelligent people that says A WHOLE LOT ABOUT YOU!
@Lawson
None of the facts in the article are Obama’s claims… they are simply facts. Obama did not write the article: the author is a conservative White businessman and investor writing in Forbes, the most conservative large circulation business magazine in America.
Everyone with a brain already knows all of these facts… it is not news, but it appears to be news to you and the rest of the Trump support scum.
You are one stupid Phuc I don’t agree with everything trump says or does and he is a bully but he was put in to shake things up and he is doing that. You guys cry the new administration in Barbados is the same as the old ripping everyone off taxing every which way to pay themselves I see it every day on here you wish someone would change things for you just like he has. Here is the problem with your think parrot you see something that fits your narrative and run with it you are the worst kind of idiot one that can only regurgitate other peoples ideas and thoughts crawl back into your hole before 45 comes out and paddles your arse
@Lawson
It is so easy to get you foaming at the mouth with your elementary school insults… but so hard to get you to express a single rational argument. You made a comment that Obama screwed up the economy in 8 years, so I showed you a conservative analysis that proves you are lying but you have no response save ad hominem insults and childish invective. Sad.
I don’t defend Obama or Mia Mottley or anybody else; just the truth, the facts. I can live in Canada (I’m a citizen), the USA (my wife is American), or the UK (I was born there), but I choose to live in Barbados because I can contribute something worthwhile.
I would like to thank the people of Barbados for falling on the sword. See you when you get sick
Jesus! Lawson your knight in shining armor is 45? PLT twists your undies just a little and you run for your 45.
I see that it takes 4 or more of you to handle Donna or WARU. I suspect you may have to call the rest of the tag team to handle him.
@Lawson November 5, 2018 8:14 PM “I would like to thank the people of Barbados for falling on the sword. See you when you get sick.”
Maybe PLT is less likely to get sick here? Plenty of sunshine and fresh air maybe?
Just recently I was saying to a friend that even though I am a senior haven’t had the flu since 2012. No flu shot either.
But plenty of fresh air and sunshine.
Going to sit here and wait for 45. He’ll do a few posts of racist shit, a post where he sulks, then he will cuss, claim a victory and leave.
We still have that boat we sent to Lebanon to pick up citizens of convience . Call ahead avoid the lines
Mia screwed up so badly that if Payne and Marshall succeed in unseating her as she would be more than deserving, let’s hope it happens before ALL of those crook demons are dragged off the island…to pay for the crimes they committe…
Mia can’t say shit, she got herself elected UNDER FALSE PRETENCES…using outright LIES….the electorate is very unlikely to forget that….
They are unlikely to forget that she wants the population who elected her to sacrifice, while she refuses to recover the people’s money stolen by her DLP friends and partners, she refuses to cut Cow and Maloney and Bizzy the thieves out of the people lives…tax dollars and Pension Fund…
Things will not end well for Mia.
And those offshore accounts hundreds and hundreds of them owned by 2 generations of crooked ass lawyers and government ministers…some of them dead and gone, but too many of them still alive and STILL tiefing from the people…that is another story that will not go away.
@Lawson yours @8.51pm
Very few people here get that cryptic remark why don’t you engage PLT directly?
To others reading: Some years ago, some Canadian citizens originally from Lebanon “retired” to their birth country and when hostilities broke out they implored the Canadian Gov’t to rescue them on the strength that they were Canadian citizens and if memory serves the Canadian Gov’t chartered a boat to take them to Cyprus for a flight back to Canada.
Lawson is implying that PLT is a citizen of convenience and made a snide remark that he will run back to Canada when times get tough.
@Sargeant
As is obvious, I returned to Barbados specifically when times were at the toughest that they have been during my lifetime. Lawson does not engage me directly because he or she lacks either the capability or the courage.
Lol sarge that’s kinda of what I am saying. See it’s better to precieve yourself as a big fish in a small pond than the reality of just being another peter in one of the oceans alluded to. We actually.have a saying the peter principal named after peters where you rise to the level of your incompetence and once reached have to find another venue to think what you contribute is relevant
It is not going away Mia..people are not stupid.
https://www.facebook.com/jackie.stewart.965/videos/910292105846996/?t=0
@Lawson November 5, 2018 8:51 PM “We still have that boat we sent to Lebanon to pick up citizens of convience . Call ahead avoid the lines.”
lawson, you can stop sniffling and come out of the corner now. how does a man who lived, worked, and paid taxes in Canada all of his working life become a citizen of convenience? A man whose children are still living, working and paying taxes there? Why are you jealous because Peter chooses to live in Barbados? He has choices. He has exercised a choice in this matter and it is none of your business.
And as for that boat sent to Lebanon. Peter’s taxes helped to pay for it.
So you can stop feeling sorry for yourself now.
@Sargeant November 5, 2018 9:26 PM “the Canadian Gov’t chartered a boat to take them to Cyprus for a flight back to Canada.”
lawson knows very well or ought reasonably to know that:
“The Government of Canada may also, as a LAST RESORT, help Canadians with transportation to the nearest safe location ON A COST-RECOVERY BASIS when all other means of commercial and personal transportation have been exhausted.
If you receive evacuation assistance from the Government of Canada, YOU WILL RECEIVE AN INVOICE FOR THE COST, WHICH MUST BE PAID WITHIN 30 days. You are also responsible for paying for your travel beyond a safe location and any related costs.”
More here: https://travel.gc.ca/assistance/emergency-info/large-scale-emergencies-abroad
@Lawson
You have yet to deal with my exposure of your lies.
@Lawson
Obama and Barbadian holder has devided America
+++++++++++
Wasn’t America divided under
Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon
Ford
Carter
Reagan
Bush 1
Clinton
Bush11
I omitted the others who went before for obvious reasons, but that is a lot of baggage to put on the shoulders of these two black men. BTW Holder was born in the USA of a Barbadian father and an American born mother and he is just as American as Trump whose mother was Scottish but you wouldn’t refer to him as Scottish Trump, funny how that works.
And another thing while we are observing history, we won’t be the ones to write it, in about 50 years and continuing historians will have their say on which President divided America, pity we won’t be around to read.
Your posting of your picture says it all your arrogance offends me. It was nice for SS to delve into your history and finances but let’s stick to the matter at hand Obama left a lot of things in turmoil for him to claim it was him that accomplished the soaring economy is just pathetic considering he was the only president that didn’t have a gdp over 3 percent
Sarge won’t see it What are you saying your no sisnett
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-gdp-growth-annual@3x.png?s=gdp+cyoy&v=201810261317y&d1=20080101&d2=20181231
@Lawson
As you can see from the graph below, your statement “he was the only president that didn’t have a gdp over 3 percent” is another lie.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth-annual
Don’t feed Lawson he is a drug addled Everclear drinking white boy.
Waru keep it up and you might not get that pearl necklace you wanted for christmas. Hows spot anyways you havent changed your name in a while he must of stopped reading your postings in favour of chasing cars.
@ The Cussbird Lawson,
I always find that when people run out of English words and start to cuss me it is because I have won the argument.
Respond in English, please. The Queen’s English if you can manage it.
P.S. As for 45 – you are saying that he wants to paddle my a**?!!!! That wouldn’t surprise me as he seems somewhat obsessed with me. Just tell him I am not into S & M.
Gazerts,
Lawson reminds me of a wind-up doll I once had. It puttered around this way and that and finally it just toppled over.
Lawson can take his pick. He cannot understand statistics or economics or he is kool-aid drinking cult member or he is a liar.
So PLT you donna now or donna do you think you are the stupid phuc I was referring to.LOL Heres what I know about economics very little by the way but enough to know when you have shit flowing in the streets and your brightest bulbs pump it into the ocean so the beaches are closed and nobody tells the tourists its time to sell
Lame.
Here’s what I said.
I do not agree with everything Obama did. I think he made some errors in his foreign policy with respect to Libya, Syria and Yemen. Obama was not the messiah. I do not belong to an Obama cult where he can do no wrong. You and your fellow Trumpians however, cannot name ONE POINT on which you disagree with your cult leader! In the minds of all sane and intelligent people that says A WHOLE LOT ABOUT YOU!
Here’s what you said.
You are one stupid Phuc I don’t agree with everything trump says or does and he is a bully but he was put in to shake things up and he is doing that. You guys cry the new administration in Barbados is the same as the old ripping everyone off taxing every which way to pay themselves I see it every day on here you wish someone would change things for you just like he has. Here is the problem with your think parrot you see something that fits your narrative and run with it you are the worst kind of idiot one that can only regurgitate other peoples ideas and thoughts crawl back into your hole before 45 comes out and paddles your arse.
You were referring to me. It is obvious.
Are your insults backfiring?
You may find things I said about plt fit you as well but read the posts before and after and you will see we were having an on going exchange. Having said that you are both cut from the same cloth
The first lines betray you. They are a direct response to mine.
But let us take you at your word.
Does 45 know that you have visions of him PADDLING PLT’s arse??????????
LOL LOL LOL
We have a blog to discuss Trump and related matters don’t we?
Sure David, but this is a continuation of something that occurred here just between us two.
Lawson,
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Did George Payne bother to tell the US Ambassador just how corrupt himself, Dale Marshall and many of the BLP ministers/senators sitting in parliament are …he should……
https://www.facebook.com/jackie.stewart.965/videos/910893505786856/?t=480
SHOULD THE NAME OF ANYONE WHO BUYS LAND FROM A BRA AUCTION BE MADE PUBLIC ?
NO NAME ORGANISATION using a front man made a good investment today.
” An unnamed organisation scooped up all three lots for almost half a million dollars, during the first of a series of planned land auctions by the Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA) which took place in Christ Church on Monday.”
http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/213407/dover-land-snapped
@Hants
let’s begin at the beginning?
First find where the auction notice and terms of the auction are posted on the BRA website.
@ NorthernObserver,
https://www.facebook.com/pg/BarbadosRevenueAuthority/posts/
@Hants
One is almost tempted to ask is Wayne Ford a recognized auctioneer? That area is a desired piece of property and I’m not surprised that it was snapped up but I share your concern about the identity of the nameless/faceless person(s) behind the bid.
BTW I didn’t delve into the FB page and was unable to see any terms or conditions of the sale but I would think that they would have been published in the newspapers ( someone could advise on that)
Since I do not subscribe to the Sunday Sun, at least you found the “notice of Auction”. I didn’t find auction terms? Do you just show up on the date at 2pm and bid?
Where was the NIS?
I am really wondering who bought that land. I don’t trust anything in this place nowadays.
@ Sargeant and NorthernObserver,
Transparency is a bad word in Barbados.
” Bartlett Morgan (hand raised) bids for it, ensuring the entity he represented bought all three lots.”
In the quest for transparency.
https://www.lexcaribbean.com/attorneys/bartlett-morgan.html
Mr Morgan is likely acting in an agent capacity, on behalf of a client. Yet, if that client is Cappo Industries, any information available on Cappo, may still not tell us who the buyer is.
It is very common at auction’s of big ticket items to use an agent.
@NorthernObserver who wrote ” It is very common at auction’s of big ticket items to use an agent.”
You are correct but I think there should be full disclosure when the BRA is selling property for non payment of taxes.
Why? The BRA’s job is to get the highest price they can, and to ensure that all those bidding have been duly prequalified, such that settlement of the auction terms will be made in full.
@ NorthernObserver,
The BRA is a Government agency and unless there is a national security issue there should be transparency.
The cynic in me thinks that there is a political reason in this case but I am probably wrong.
Being transparent at this juncture in our history is about creating equality by ensuring equitable distribution of wealth etc. building a worthy society is complex.
Did Gov’t get market value? The West Coast may be more valuable but that is still a prime piece of real estate I wonder how much was owing in arrears. Although Mr. Forde said there was no response to their numerous attempts to get hold of the persons responsible, I am left to speculate as to why the owner(s) wouldn’t attempt to sell it on their own to garner more of the value.
When the taxes have been satisfied what happens to the remainder of the money? Does the Gov’t keep it in trust for the owner to claim or will they send in a cheque by registered mail to the last known address? In any case someone got a steal.
“IF” it works like elsewhere, the “collection costs” plus the taxes and interest, generally exceed anything garnered via auction, such that there is rarely a positive balance to any account. In fact, one of the reasons many jurisdictions resort to auction, is when they are reasonably sure, the monies owing exceed any auction estimate. And this frequently ignores any loans/liens held by others. Another reason why the auction terms are vital.