BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – The Central Bank of Barbados (CBB) says the annual balance of payments survey 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
The CBB said that businesses receiving the survey will have until June 9 to complete it.
“I see it as a corporate duty to do right,’ said CBB Governor, Dr. Kevin Greenidge, adding, “Without the data, we are shooting in the dark, and we’re not making efficient decisions to help those same businesses.”
Greenidge said that managing the economy becomes more challenging without accurate information about the balance of payments and noted that that could have implications for the businesses themselves.
“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,” said Anton Belgrave, the CBB’s director of Research and Economic Analysis.
“Without foreign reserves, we would not be able to either consume or invest to the extent that we currently do,” he said, noting that the survey allows the Central Bank to understand more about Barbados’ foreign reserves.
Belgrave said that when businesses do not complete the survey, “it degrades the level of our economic intelligence and expands the amount of ignorance in terms of our understanding and knowledge of the economy.”
For this reason, the new Central Bank of Barbados Act passed in 2020 makes it mandatory for businesses to provide information that the Bank requires to carry out its functions. At present, companies that fail to do so will be fined BDS$10,000 (O)ne BDS dollar=US$0.50 cents) on summary conviction.
However, the CBB said it would seek to adjust how 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,” said the CBB’s secretary Elson Gaskin.
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