BRIDGETOWN-The Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment has dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the is­land is mov­ing to­wards the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) for as­sis­tance in shoring up the lo­cal econ­o­my. "There is no IMF pro­gramme in Bar­ba­dos; there is no con­tem­pla­tion of an IMF pro­gramme what­so­ev­er by this gov­ern­ment, "said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Chris Sinck­ler. "We do not need it and there­fore, in the con­text of that, whether IMF or no IMF there is no con­tem­pla­tion, ei­ther ex­plic­it­ly or im­plic­it­ly, of a de­val­u­a­tion of the Bar­ba­dos dol­lar," he added. Speak­ing on the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (Amend­ment) Bill in Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, Sinck­ler said the leg­is­la­tion was nec­es­sary to fa­cil­i­tate changes to the ex­ist­ing Act to the is­land's ben­e­fit. "Bar­ba­dos is a mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and has been for a num­ber of years, and as such, there are cer­tain fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as a mem­ber of the Fund which we share with coun­ter­part coun­tries." Sinck­ler told leg­is­la­tors that it had been brought to the gov­ern­ment's at­ten­tion by the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al and con­firmed by the Cen­tral Bank of Bar­ba­dos "that over a pe­ri­od of time changes to the ar­ti­cles of agree­ment of the in­ter­na­tion­al fund have been made, sanc­tioned by Bar­ba­dos, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly al­ways re­duced to law".

He said these changes "can come with a de­gree of fre­quen­cy as has been the case with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund. "Some­times every year when they have an an­nu­al meet­ing there may be an in­sti­tu­tion­al change and the pres­sure on na­tion­al par­lia­ments to come to Par­lia­ment and change an act every time the IMF changes its laws, its ar­ti­cles of agree­ment and as­so­ci­a­tion be­comes a fair­ly te­dious and of course very try­ing and tax­ing ex­er­cise. "So to the ex­tent that the cur­rent changes we are be­ing re­quired to make con­sti­tute changes to that con­sti­tu­tion of the Fund and in the con­text of the fact that we know that changes were be­ing made pre­vi­ous to this, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly brought un­der the law, we've moved to­day to do a cou­ple of things,' Sinck­ler told leg­is­la­tors. He said the first is to give ef­fect "to the changes which were done last year at the IMF's meet­ing and to give au­thor­i­ty to the min­is­ter lat­er­al­ly to be able to make such changes by way of or­der, rather than hav­ing to do it by way of amend­ments of the Act each time the IMF changes its ar­ti­cles of agree­ment". In re­cent years, the Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion has been call­ing on the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment a wage freeze in the pub­lic ser­vice and im­me­di­ate cuts in gov­ern­ment spend­ing. It said Bridgetown should lim­it its ex­pan­sive so­cial spend­ing to the "most vul­ner­a­ble parts of so­ci­ety", giv­en the Fre­un­del Stu­art-led ad­min­is­tra­tion's "lim­it­ed fis­cal space." (AP)