Raphael John-Lall

CEO of the Bar­ba­dos Pri­vate Sec­tor As­so­ci­a­tion, Anne Reid, is invit­ing T&T’s in­vestors and busi­ness peo­ple to do busi­ness in Bar­ba­dos.

She said on May 1, Bar­ba­dos had an of­fi­cial launch of the “De­c­la­ra­tion of Mis­sions Bar­ba­dos” and it was the re­sult of stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion to trans­form Bar­ba­dos in­to a sus­tain­able, eco­nom­i­cal­ly pros­per­ous so­ci­ety and they are at the stage of de­ter­min­ing how these mis­sions will be ex­e­cut­ed

“This is to align with Prime Min­is­ter’s Mia Mot­t­ley’s ex­pressed goal to ce­ment Bar­ba­dos as a glob­al busi­ness hub. By 2030, Bar­ba­dos aims to be­come a clean, beau­ti­ful large ocean state cham­pi­oning sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, lo­cal­ly and glob­al­ly.

“Al­so, by 2023, a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in crime be­cause as we know the chal­lenges of crime in terms of do­ing busi­ness and at­tract­ing in­vestors to the ju­ris­dic­tion. Al­so, by 2030 to em­pow­er and en­fran­chise all Bar­ba­dos’ work­ers and fam­i­lies cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for own­er­ship and wealth cre­ation to en­able Bar­ba­di­ans to take care of them­selves and each oth­er,” she said.

Reid spoke last Tues­day in a we­bi­nar that is part of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) Do­ing Busi­ness With the World Se­ries.

T&T busi­ness peo­ple who were part of the we­bi­nar raised dif­fer­ent ques­tions rang­ing from what prod­ucts do Bar­ba­dos’ busi­ness­es have to of­fer to how do T&T in­vestors open busi­ness­es there.

Dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion, Reid gave ad­vice on how to reg­is­ter a busi­ness in Bar­ba­dos, how for­eign­ers should set up a bank ac­count, cus­toms pro­ce­dures and oth­er de­tails in­vestors should know when do­ing busi­ness there.

“This is some­thing for you to ap­pre­ci­ate so that when you come in­to the is­land of Bar­ba­dos to do busi­ness, you are not nec­es­sar­i­ly floun­der­ing in high seas alone but there is the sup­port that you can have as you char­ter your way through the maze of do­ing busi­ness on a day-to-day ba­sis.”

T&T, Bar­ba­dos trade

Pres­i­dent of the TTC­SI, Mark Edghill who al­so gave re­marks at the busi­ness we­bi­nar point­ed out that Bar­ba­dos is now T&T’s biggest trad­ing part­ner.

“At present, T&T can be con­sid­ered Bar­ba­dos’ largest trad­ing part­ner. Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from Coun­try-Re­ports-dot-org, 22.5 per cent of goods ex­port­ed by Bar­ba­dos come to T&T; while 39 per cent of goods im­port­ed in­to Bar­ba­dos come from T&T. The Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base es­ti­mates that in 2022, Bar­ba­dos’ ex­ports to T&T were US$32.94 mil­lion. In 2021, Bar­ba­dos im­ports from T&T were val­ued at US$103.77 mil­lion, with the li­on’s share of those im­ports com­ing from the en­er­gy sec­tor.”

He re­ferred to the re­cent­ly held Cari­com meet­ing in Port-of-Spain where state­ments were made on the free move­ment of peo­ple across mem­ber states to live and to work.

In the fi­nal Com­mu­niqué from the Sum­mit, is­sued on Ju­ly 5, Cari­com Heads of State agreed the fol­low­ing:

“The ini­tia­tives com­pris­ing the macro­eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy co-or­di­na­tion agen­da for the 13-Mem­ber State CSME (the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my), in­clud­ing the op­er­a­tional­is­ing of the re­gion­al cap­i­tal mar­ket, must be tabled for adop­tion by Mem­ber States by Ju­ly 2024.

“To work to­wards the free move­ment of all Cari­com na­tion­als with­in the Com­mu­ni­ty by 31 March 2024, ac­knowl­edg­ing that there are cer­tain ba­sic guar­an­tees that should be af­ford­ed to all Cari­com na­tion­als ex­er­cis­ing their right to freely move and re­main in­def­i­nite­ly in an­oth­er Mem­ber State of the Com­mu­ni­ty.”

“What could the full im­ple­men­ta­tion and ex­pan­sion of the CSME mean for en­tre­pre­neurs and firms op­er­at­ing in the ser­vices sec­tor? I be­lieve those op­por­tu­ni­ties will be ex­plored dur­ing our ses­sion to­day, as we learn more about Do­ing Busi­ness with Bar­ba­dos. It is a time­ly dis­cus­sion giv­en that the Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos is Cari­com’s Lead for im­ple­men­ta­tion of the CSME,” Edghill said.