Governor Cleviston Haynes delivers the Central Bank of Barbados’ review of Barbados’ economic performance in the first six months of 2020 and gives his outlook for the remainder of the year.
Source: Central Bank of Barbados
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Donna August 10, 2020 12:31 PM
“Walter,
Overstating the problem only serves to render it insurmountable…….
Our task is to show them how unity would give everybody a chance to rise – EVENTUALLY.”
Donna,
As I said before, we are at the stage where we need to properly identify the problem. Our individual experiences will naturally lead us to the see the problem from different vantage points, but we must be mature and broad-minded enough to accept the views of others.
Implicitly, you see disunity as the basic problem. Unity, of course is the ultimate solution, but your mind tells you that it would take some time before we can achieve that. Patience, empathy, and understanding seem to be some of the necessary, but unspoken, ingredients in our recipe for success, the way you see it.
After connecting the dots, I am on board with your views. However, systemic forces always appear to be at work to prevent us from coming together to achieve anything that will move us collectively forward. In short, the perpetuation of our disunity is the main agenda item of those who intend to feast, ad infinitum, at our expense.
The emergence of Covid-19 has made a bad situation worse. Many households have no income. Young children, thousands upon thousands of unemployed adults, and senior citizens alike are facing a very bleak and uncertain future. The “system” seems incapable of lifting a finger to provide sustainable, meaningful help. People of “colour” are mostly the ones feeling the full brunt of the effects of this pandemic. What unified effort have we devised, or can we devise, to help our suffering brothers and sisters at this stressful point in time?
@Hal Austin August 10, 2020 7:37 AM “Barbadians at home would have replied I had to be working at CNN to be a proper journalist. That is why an entire nation went in to a trance when the president had a routine interview with Amanpour and on tabloid TV in the U|K.”
Only in you fervid political imagination did “an entire nation went in to a trance”
That is not true. I can assure you that most of us just got on with our business for the day. Most sensible people understand that no politician [nor retired journalist] can make the sun rise or set, can make the rain fall or stop it from falling.
Most of us are not as enamored of politicians as you are.
@William Skinner at 6:14 a.m. “Now, I am not saying that envy,malice and bad mindedness don’t exist but in my very humble opinion it’s more the exception than the rule.”
Thanks for saying this. This too has been my lived experience. Wherever I go people are incredibly generous to me. Generous with love, with time, with ideas, with money
Walter,
I have experienced some of the negative you spoke about. I have just experienced more of the positive. When I was going through the negative it seemed magnified. That is only natural. I have since put it into perspective and realised that the positive has far outweighed the negative over the course of the fifty years I have lived here.
Unfortunately I have no quick fix for the situation we find ourselves in at present. More fertile minds than mine will have to come up with that. My solutions are all long term and would be weird as I am. Quite frankly, I think we just have to get back to basics. Many households used to grow their own food. I encourage everyone I meet to do so. If I can do it so can anyone else. Food comes first. Anything else can come after. This is about survival until….
We are going to have to treat this as though it is a time of war. We must revise our expectations, pull together and fight through.
Things just cannot be the same. It simply is not possible.
Indeed Cuhdear Bajan! Most people go for days without studying a single politician. I myself didn’t hear that many people even talking about the CNN interview.
When he speaks I am often left to wonder if I am living in the same place about which he claims to speak.
Very ordinary village kindness. During the curfew when I could not get to the “plantation” our of the neighbors in my natal village noticed that I had a pile of cassava sticks that needed to be planted. Without asking, and without any expectation of reward, he stepped into the land and planted the 50 or so sticks of cassava, and added some animal fertilizer as well. It may help that our families have know one another for at least 4 generations to my knowledge, and i expect even longer than that. We may literally have arrived in Barbados on the slave ship, and our families have loved and supported one another for generations. He is the very close kin to a high ranking government official. Do I trust his kinsman? Yes I do. Since the high ranking kinsman passed the hands of the same incredible loving hands of the same grandma. Therefore he is a good person, very smart as well.
We talk about micro aggressions.
But who talks about micro kindnesses?
We all need to start practicing micro kindnesses now.
Some people seem to need to convince themselves that they made the right decision in leaving Barbados. With their attitudes I know they did. They are looking through the white man’s lens and spewing his narrative for him. They are of no use to Barbadians.
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BLACK MEN/WOMEN LIVING ABROAD US/UK/CANADA ETC., CAN NO LONGER SEE FROM THEIR OWN EXPERIENCES TO FORM THEIR OWN OPINIONS.
YOU ARE EXTREMELY NARROW MINDED AND IGNORANT.
PART OF THE 2×3 ISLAND CONDITION.
HAVING NEVER LIVED IN THE USA YOU FORMED YOUR OPINION PRIMARILY ON WATCHING THE ‘NEWS’, INTERNET AND THIRD PARTY INFORMATION.
I KNEW YOU ARE DELUSIONAL, I NOW KNOW YOU ARE A FULL BLOWN JACKASS.
YOU VOTED FOR THE BLP ANOTHER TELL TALE SIGN THAT YOU ARE GULLIBLE AND DON’T THINK FOR YOURSELF.
I BELIEVE YOU SHOULD STICK TO TALKING TO YOUR PLANTS IN YOUR KITCHEN GARDEN WHO WILL NOT BE ABLE TO THINK AND RESPOND TO YOU AS YOU TALKED SHITE ABOUT OTHERS LOOKING THROUGH THE WHITE MAN’S LENS.
@ Baje
Some scientists now believe that plants talk to each other.
@BAJE,
I’m happy for you have prospered from Trump’s boosting of government debt… In essence you have borrowed that money from your grandchildren. If you don’t repay it because it is “forgivable” then you will be screwing your grandchildren and their children.
@Baje
Barbados is doing nothing to help Black business… the only assistance is going to the foreign owned Hotel sector and the White owned segment of the construction industry.
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IN BARBADOS THE COUNTRY DEBT PRIMARILY WHICH HAS BEEN USED TO BENEFIT WHITE BAJANS AND ARE BEING PAID BY THE BLACK BAJAN MASSES AND THEIR FUTURE GENERATIONS.
@ PLT I FOLLOW THE RULES.
The funds from the PPP can be used for the following purposes:
Payroll—salary, wage, vacation, parental, family, medical, or sick leave, health benefits
Mortgage interest—as long as the mortgage was signed before February 15, 2020
Rent—as long as the lease agreement was in effect before February 15, 2020
Utilities—as long as service began before February 15, 2020 (here’s what’s included in utilities)
All expenses that fall under those categories are eligible for forgiveness.
@ Baje
Some scientists now believe that plants talk to each other.
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LOL.
THERE MAY BE ONTO SOMETHING.
And right on cue out he comes! And I did not even call his name. As usual.
Poor fellow! What have I done to disturb you so?????
I cannot help it if I am happy in Barbados with the net worth that places me in the top ten percent of the world’s richest people.
Murdah!
P.S. I do talk to my plants and they reply. They tell me they are happy to be living in Barbados.
Seems to me I have taken more abuse from this creature than I have in fifty years of living in Barbados.
Makes you wonder who the real problem people are.
Wuhlaus!
But wait…voting for the BLP makes me gullible?????? There is bad, worse and worst. The last DLP government was the worst. That is a fact that cannot be refuted.
What a silly and illogical man you are!
I would liken you to the ass of a jackass or a rasshole asshole but I shan’t out of respect for your buddy Hal who does not approve of “obscenities”unless they are directed by you towards me. Then he likes it very much and believes it to be high classed.
Murdah! Muh belly! I love it when you guys expose yourselves.
Sick!
But wait…voting for the BLP makes me gullible?????? There is bad, worse and worst. The last DLP government was the worst. That is a fact that cannot be refuted.
What a silly and illogical man you are!
I would liken you to the ass of a jackass or a rasshole asshole but I shan’t out of respect for your buddy Hal who does not approve of “obscenities”unless they are directed by you towards me. Then he likes it very much and believes it to be high classed.
Murdah! Muh belly! I love it when you guys expose yourselves.
Sick!
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SILLY AND ILLOGICAL YOU CALL IT.
I AGREE NO ONE CAN BE MORE FOUL MOUTHED AND NAME CALLING THAN YOU ON BU.
DON’T LIKE SOME OF YOUR OWN MEDICINE SINCE YOU TAKE THE CAKE OF BEING THE MOST VULGAR POSTER ON BU,
YOUR MANY VULGAR AND INSULTING POSTINGS ARE THERE LONG BEFORE I STARTED POSTING ON BU DIRECTED AT OTHERS INCLUDING @Hal…
I HAVE NEVER VOTED DLP OR BLP SO IT SHOWS WHO IS THE REAL FOOL.
IF THE CAT FIT WEAR IT.
LOOK IN THE MIRROR TO SEE WHO IS REALLY ‘SICK’.
I feel so sorry for you. Can’t even tell when I find you funny. You don’t bother me at all.
Keep going!
But wait – the most vulgar poster on BU?????
Not Piece, not Pachamama?
Oh dear me!
I see you are sexist too!
And now it is off to the garden to talk to my plants. They are doing better than Baje. They don’t need any stimulus.
Wuhlaus!
Our anti-government BU members obviously live in failed horror states like the USA or UK.
Here in the west and south of Barbados, everything is as usual: full supermarkets, new cars and good food. People wear their masks and are relaxed. Many praise our leader Mia Mottley as their savior.
Obviously there are two Barbados Islands: one for the opposition and one for ordinary people and neutral oberservers.
Are we going to discuss the performance of the Greenback in the currency markets? Is it relevant? Does it fit in to a pattern of fiscal space?
UK unemployment figures see biggest hike since 2009 as 730,000 jobs cut since start of coronavirus pandemic
In the last few decades there has been little convergence of income levels in Latin America with those in the United States, in sharp contrast with both emerging Asia and emerging Europe. This paper argues that lack of convergence was not the result of low investment. Latin America is poorer because of lower human capital levels and lower TFP—not because of a lower capital-output ratio. Cross-country differences of TFP in turn are associated with differences in human capital, governance and business climate indicators. We demonstrate that once levels of human capital and governance are taken into account, there is strong conditional cross-country convergence. Poor countries with high levels of human capital, governance or business climate indicators converge rapidly. Poor countries without those attributes do not. We show that low investment is the result of low TFP and thus GDP growth—not the cause….(Quote)