FORMER PRIME MINISTER Owen Arthur wants Government to privatise some state-owned entities as the economy can “no longer” support all public enterprises and the welfare programmes Barbadians now enjoy.
“The brutal truth is that the economy can no longer carry the full range of state enterprises and welfare support programmes that have been put in place over the last 50 years,” he said during an address yesterday at the monthly meeting of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry that brought him a standing ovation.
The man who ran the affairs of Government for 14 years told the packed room at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre that fiscal stability could only be restored to Barbados “if almost $200 million in adjustments are made to Government’s transfers and subsidies to its state enterprises”.
He said it was time for Barbados to review the relevance of the Scandinavian state-assisted welfare model it had adopted, since such a model here was not supported by a similarly liberalised and efficient business system that generated the income needed to be distributed, as in Nordic countries.
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