EDITORIAL: Financial sector key to economy

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - The development of this country as an international financial centre carried through during the first Tom Adams administration in the 1970s and was part of a major restructuring of a critical area of the Barbados economy. That sector was important then and it is important now!
By the early ’70s sugar had lost its place as our major foreign exchange earner. In any event the labour force which would once have been attracted, perhaps out of sheer necessity, to menial jobs on the plantation had escaped the back-breaking toil of the cane fields through upward social mobility; and their newly developed intellectual skills demanded more congenial employment.
The sector fitted neatly with tourism since the more people heard about the island, the better for its name recognition as a possible vacation spot.