Debt choking growth chances

Barbados should kiss its hopes of major economic growth goodbye for now.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) warned that Government’s “troublesome” fiscal problems and “high levels” of public debt had the economy constrained.

In a new “special report” examining the Caribbean’s fiscal challenges, economists in the IDB’s Caribbean Department said in Barbados “the build-up of debt, and the increasing costs of servicing it, are crowding out fiscal space and have had adverse implications for private investment and consumption decisions because of the high country risk”.

At the same time, the bank asserted that part of the challenge was that when budgeted and actual figures were compared, it showed Government was overestimating its revenue and underestimated its spending. (SC)

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