Minister of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Water Resource Management Dr David Estwick
A senior Government minister has admitted his party’s economic policies are all wrong for the ailing Barbados economy.
Minister of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Water Resource Management Dr David Estwick lamented that his peers had failed to consider alternative approaches, including a plan he had submitted three years ago.
In an interview with the Barbados Today online newspaper, Dr Estwick highlighted a letter he issued to Cabinet two years ago warning that the Government was on the wrong course by allowing the Central Bank of Barbados to print money to prop up its current expenditure.
“It is widely known that for much of our first term in Government that the Central Bank of Barbados printed money to support Government’s current expenditure, posing a real risk to declining reserves in the process,” Estwick wrote to the Prime Minister in a letter dated January 20, 2014. He said he maintains that position.
The issue of printing money has been at the centre of a dramatic breakdown in relations between Central Bank Governor and Finance Minister Chris Sinckler.
At a forum aired on the state-owned television station earlier this month, Worrell warned the Government had to stop printing money. Shortly after, Minister Sinckler asked the Governor to step down or be dismissed. Worrell countered by securing a court injunction to block Sinckler’s attempts to have him removed. The matter returns to court today.
Minister Estwick stayed clear of commenting on the case, but he expressed grave concern about the state of the economy.
He insisted that Barbados would have been on a sound footing if his alternative plan to revive the economy had been accepted.
Estwick, a former Minister of Economic Affairs, had recommended at the time that Government should negotiate a $5 billion sinking fund from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to wipe out the country’s debt.
The plan had called for the administration to refinance and restructure the public debt, create debt and fiscal sustainability and engender investor confidence and foreign direct investment.
Estwick remains confident that it was the “best approach” but said it may be a little too late now.