Bank report a concern

GOVERNMENT and the private sector are challenging information contained in the World Bank report on the ease of doing business in Barbados.

The “vexed issue”, according to Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, was raised in a presentation by private sector representative Andrew Brathwaite at a full meeting of the Social Partnership convened by Stuart at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre yesterday.

Speaking to the media afterwards, the Prime Minister said while it was agreed that “not all the information contained in the report about Barbados would satisfy the most elastic definition of accurate, we did agree that the perception created by what is contained in the report could influence people who want to do business in Barbados, and therefore we had to treat perception as reality. Therefore, those issues that were within our competence to correct, we had to correct them”.

One area of concern, Stuart said, was that there was no response from the World Bank when information contained in the report was challenged in writing, which led him to question the source of the published information. (GE)

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