BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – The Central Bank of Barbados’ annual Balance of Payments survey, which is designed to capture data related to transactions between residents of Barbados and those in the rest of the world, will be issued on April 17. Businesses that receive the survey will have until June 9 to complete it.
Anton Belgrave, the bank’s director of research and economic analysis, explained that the survey allows the bank to understand more about Barbados’ foreign reserves and stressed how important these reserves are to our economy and to Barbadian’s way of life:
“As an open economy, the Barbados economy lives and dies on the level of reserves because every aspect of our consumption has an import content and every aspect of investment has an import content. Without foreign reserves, we would not be able to either consume or invest to the extent that we currently do.”
Belgrave said that when businesses do not complete the survey, “it basically degrades the level of our economic intelligence and expands the amount of ignorance in terms of our understanding and our knowledge of the economy.”
For this reason, the new Central Bank of Barbados Act, which was passed in 2020, makes it mandatory for businesses to provide information that the bank requires to carry out its functions. At present, businesses that fail to do so will be fined $10,000 on summary conviction, however, the bank will be seeking to adjust the way those fines are applied.
“We are going to go a bit further and try to get legislation through parliament that will give us the power to impose those penalties rather than to take the matter through the court system,” bank secretary Elson Gaskin revealed.
Governor Dr Greenidge expressed his hope that businesses will provide the information readily rather than the bank having to resort to fining any entity, “I see it as a corporate duty to do right.”
He reiterated Belgrave’s point that managing the economy becomes more challenging in the absence of accurate information about the balance of payments, and noted that could have implications for the businesses themselves.
“Without the data, we are shooting in the dark, and we’re not making efficient decisions to help those same businesses.”
