by Tony Best

IF, AS FINANCIAL GURUS ASSERT, investment is a matter
of "balancing risks and returns" then Barbados is a "safe place
to put your money".

That was particularly true, advised Charlie Skeete, a recently retired senior economic adviser at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, when
it came to "Government paper," bonds and treasury bills.

"Barbados has a stellar reputation in the international money markets and that goes back to the . . . 1950s and early 1960s with a loan raised on the London market," Skeete told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY.

"The Barbados Government has
a well-establish record as a good investment and its paper comes with a kind of lineage. There is no reason why an investor in Canada or anywhere else who is looking
for an opportunity to feel that
non-repayment was around the corner with Barbados," he added.

He pointed out that Barbados was among the few developing countries in the world with an investment-grade rating from Wall Street and it had no history of defaulting on its loans.

Three other countries in the emerging market of the Caribbean and Latin America have investment-grade ratings: Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, and Chile.

"That makes them very attractive to investors from the United States and Canada,"
added Skeete.

The former Barbados Ambassador in Washington was commenting on a report written by Benjamin Tal, an economist with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Ottawa, about the conservative mood of Canadian investors these days. CIBC is the parent company of FirstCaribbean International Bank.

In the CIBC World Markets report, Tal said Canadian investors seeking a safe haven from volatile stock markets were moving their funds to super-safe investment such as government savings bonds and Treasury bills.