BARBADIANS SHOULD BRACE themselves for more job losses for the remainder of this year, says Governor of the Central Bank Dr Delisle Worrell.
He said at least 1 000 jobs were lost between June and September, and lamented that this trend would continue until the upcoming tourist season starts in December.
“It would seem that the trend of job losses will not be turned around until the next coming winter season. Providing that the season lives up to expectations, we should see some turn around,” Worrell told a Press conference yesterday to discuss the Review Of The Barbados Economy For The First Nine Months Of 2011 issued Tuesday.
“This continuing job loss has been of great disappointment to us. We thought that 2011 would have been the year that we would have built back from the situation where we were at the end of 2010,” said the governor.
He explained that tourism was the only sector that could provide enough funds to effect a turnaround in the island’s economic fortunes.
Worrell, however, warned that with the industrial economies on which Barbados’ depended for foreign exchange slowing down, the international investment climate remained very uncertain.
“We are already seeing the results of that in our tourism and in our international business and financial services sector. What this means is that we will have to hold a tight rein on the economy for a little while longer than we had expected, and in particular, our fiscal consolidation measures would have to remain in place in order to protect our foreign reserves,” said Worrell.
The governor did not think the economy was heading back into recession. He said that as long as the country was able to maintain some positive growth this year more than last year, the situation would improve.
Likewise, he did not expect another downgrade in Barbados’ credit rating as long as we are able to attain the targets in Government’s Medium Term Fiscal Strategy.
“So long as we are able to come on board with those targets, there is very little chance of a downgrade,” Worrell said.
