Democratic Labour Party candidate for St Michael South Central, Richard Sealy, has raised questions about the possibility of Barbados entering another International Monetary Fund (IMF) stabilisation programme.
While addressing supporters at Haggatt Hall, St Michael, on Sunday night, he quoted from the latest IMF report following the recently-concluded Article 4 Barbados consultation, which stated: “Government will need an ambitious fiscal adjustment of six per cent of GDP [gross domestic product] going forward from 2022 to 2025.”
“When you hear the Prime Minister at the nomination centre at St Michael North East talking about choices and about tough decisions, that is what she talking about,” the former minister of tourism declared, while noting that the current four-year IMF programme “will end in October of this year”.
“Based on all of the indicators, I think we probably will have to go in another programme and I don’t think that one is going to be as accommodating as this one. So the simple question is, what is it you plan to do in this IMF programme that is about to be implemented? Are you imposing more taxes on people who are already overtaxed?
“We need to know what is it that you plan to implement within this IMF programme or beyond the IMF programme that has so scared you that you felt you had to have an election first,” Sealy said. (GC)
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