Described as the victim of a terminal disease known as “implementation deficit disorder”, Barbados has been urged to take immediate action coming out of a recent competitiveness survey instead of merely adding it to the pile of other reports.
Businessbarbados.com, which conducted the exercise over the last two months, said that while the survey was useful, a depressing feature was that it contained little that was new.
The 71-page report said: “The morale-sapping fact is that the same problems and shortcomings, and corresponding solutions listed are those that have been highlighted for years if not decades, such as inefficiencies in the operation of the port, delays in town planning, low productivity, indifferent customer service, poor business facilitation in the public service and so on ad nauseum.
“The only difference now is that the situation is more acute and at breaking point. If doing surveys and publishing reports were the solution to our problems, we would have been out of the woods a long time ago.”
Businessbarbados.com therefore warned that the core deficit of implementation must be fearlessly confronted and solved, since “as a society we are stuck, generating a lot of heat but with the spinning wheels sinking ever deeper into the sand”.
