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SUSTAINED
ECONOMIC GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT AND FULL EMPLOYMENT
To achieve our
national development goals we will spur on the recovery from
the recent recession and utilise a mix of fiscal, monetary,
trade, interest rate, exchange rates, energy, sectoral and
capacity building measures to restore the economy to a sustainable
path of realising an annual real growth of at least 3% per
year.
We:
- Will not devalue
the Barbados dollar and we will continue to boost our foreign
exchange
reserves to make this possible.
- Will maintain
the current regime that has ensured that interest rates
remain at historically low levels.
- Having reduced
taxes on energy products to levels competitive with any
in the Caribbean, we will support and implement a pricing
policy to hold energy prices to the lowest levels consistent
with international crude oil prices.
- Will institute
policies to contain our overall fiscal deficits to no more
than 2.5% of the GDP and the overall public debt to no more
than 60% of the GDP.
- Will in the
next term progressively REMOVE EXCHANGE CONTROLS on capital
transactions, first in the context of our obligations under
the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, CSME, and secondly
in relation to our obligations under the FTAA.
Full Employment
We have in our
first two terms successfully reduced unemployment to historically
low levels. The
reduction of unemployment to negligible proportions is a goal
that is now within our grasp.
To achieve
it we will:
- Implement measures
to stimulate investment to create new enterprises and expand
existing ones.
- Exploit export
market opportunities made possible by new trade arrangements,
especially for financial and professional services.
- Implement strategies
to diversify our economy into special market niches to take
full advantage of the quality of our human capital.
- Fully leverage
the benefits of our location and our tradition for economic
stability.
- Put in place
new financial, technical assistance and capacity building
and institutional support measures to enable small and medium
sized enterprises to thrive and create new employment opportunities.
- Continue the
aggressive development of our human capital to meet local,
regional and global requirements.
- Continue to
promote measures to boost productivity so as to enhance
the competitiveness of Barbadian workers and enterprises.
- Institute new
policies to facilitate economic expansion through the export
of Barbadian technology, intellectual capital, enterprise,
brands and the products of our cultural industries, to take
advantage of opportunities created by CSME and FTAA.
- Implement,
through the Commission on Competitiveness, the programme
to remove encumbrances and to reduce the cost of doing business
in this country.
- Phase out existing
surtaxes and other extraordinary protective tariff mechanisms
in the interest of creating a better climate for tourism
and international business.
- Provide manufacturing
and agriculture with subsidies and income transfers that
are compatible with our regional and trade obligations.
- Restructure
the taxation regime to make Barbados the preferred location
for doing business in the Caribbean.
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