BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Advocate - Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development Donville Inniss says the Caribbean has to keep up with technological changes in order to take full advantage of doing business in a global village.
“I sense that the days of credit cards with magnetic strips may be going the way of the pay phone or the snail mail. We cannot afford to be left behind,” he stated.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Advocate - The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) will give its ruling in the matter of Shanique Myrie against the Government of Barbados at a later date, which is yet to be announced.
The matter came to a close yesterday at the CCJ’s Headquarters in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, with President of the CCJ Dennis Byron adjourning the matter so the seven-judge panel can deliberate on the evidence provided in the case.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Technocrats can do a lot more to build confidence in the ability of state institutions to facilitate an enabling environment for business, to create a greener environment for generations to come and to position Barbados to take full advantage of its CARICOM membership. Recently, Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development, Donville Inniss, stated that there were issues which need to be addressed within the Port that were impacting heavily on the ease of doing business and the cost of living.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - THE recent announcement by European Union officials of an investment package for the Caribbean is good news all around.
Not only is the proposal a welcome piece of information by recipient countries, which are witnessing a slowdown in capital inflows, but the announcement of the Caribbean Investment Facility (CIF) also conveys the position that there remains support within the European Union for the Caribbean contrary to views in some quarters that Europe is showing a lack of interest in its former colonies in the region.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - How beneficial or not to the Caribbean is the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the 27-nation European Union (EU) as a bloc and the 15 small Caribbean members of CARIFORUM individually?
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - “The private sector must be the driver of the economy!” This is the expressed view of His Excellency, the Hon. Robert Morris, CHB, Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM, as he delivered the featured address at the Combermere School’s Annual Speech Day and Prize-giving Ceremony. He noted that one of the problems he had detected in CARICOM is that it is so “political” and focused on the state, that there is not enough room for the private sector.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Given the parlous state of regional economies, there could scarcely be disagreement that if any of our traditional officious bystanders, the little green man from Mars, the fly on the wall or the politically observant “blind man on a trotting horse” were to observe our current situation, he would offer a view that “it cannot be business as usual”. Indeed, this identical phrase has become a modern cliché, applying at different times to our courts, our public service, our policymaking, our university and even the regional cricket team.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Whether or not the call for a special court for tourism-related crimes comes into being, Barbados needs to be safer – for the half-million tourists who visit here annually and, equally, for our citizens.
This fair land is not immune to the dramatic increase of crime, mainly robbery-based and drug-related, that has been sweeping the Caribbean in the last decade; but keeping these shores as safe as possible must be paramount, particularly in the current challenging economic times when every tourism dollar and every ounce of positive publicity counts.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - An official of one of the United Nations agencies has expressed concern about the dearth of social data in the Caribbean region.
UNICEF’s Representative for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Khin-Sandi Lwin, made the point yesterday morning while addressing those gathered for the opening of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), Data Analysis Workshop in the conference room of the Baobab Towers.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Barbados continues to bank on its people as its most valuable resource – a position that is reinforced by the heavy investment made by the State in the areas of education and health care. It is a natural synergy; after all, why invest millions in equipping a workforce with skills that are unable to be optimally implemented due to low productivity stemming from ill health? And of course, with health care being largely State-funded, the more that can be done to reduce avoidable illnesses, the better.