Dollar Wine

Article by GERALYN EDWARD

A LEAD ECONOMIST with RBC Caribbean banking group is floating the idea that Barbados adjust the value of its dollar or eliminate the Bajan dollar altogether and use just American currency.

Marla Dukharan, a Trinidadian economist with the Royal Bank of Canada, created a stir last year when she advised the Barbados Government to restructure its ballooning debt because the Freundel Stuart administration was running out of options.

Her public statements drew the ire of Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler who blasted the RBC official in the House of Assembly. However, the highly regarded economist is maintaining her position of debt restructuring.

And in her assessment of Sinckler’s last Budget and the state of the economy, Dukharan questioned the plan to set up a duty-free shopping zone to encourage Barbadians to spend more of the US dollars they held at home and not spend them abroad. (GE)

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