Nadaleen Singh

In a Jan­u­ary 21 ad­dress in Trinidad, Bar­ba­dos Min­is­ter of In­dus­try Donville In­niss had ex­pressed strong op­ti­mism that Bar­ba­dos' econ­o­my was on an up­ward climb.

He told busi­ness peo­ple, in­clud­ing lo­cal in­vestors, at the first quar­ter­ly busi­ness lun­cheon host­ed by T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce that Bar­ba­dos had en­joyed a good 2013 win­ter tourism sea­son.

One banker has hailed the slow­down in the Bar­ba­dos econ­o­my as an op­por­tu­ni­ty and not a loss to his busi­ness.

Last Fri­day, Mark St Hill, First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al's (FCIB) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of re­tail, busi­ness and in­ter­na­tion­al bank­ing, said the de­clin­ing econ­o­my in Bar­ba­dos was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove its op­er­a­tions. Over­all, the bank is un­der­go­ing re­struc­tur­ing as a re­sult of the tough eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in Caribbean economies.

First­Caribbean is ma­jor­i­ty-owned by Cana­da's CIBC, with op­er­a­tions in 18 ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing Be­lize and Cu­ra­cao.

Ac­cord­ing to its Web site, the bank has a pres­ence in: An­guil­la, An­tigua, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Cay­man Is­lands, Cu­ra­cao, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Ja­maica, St Eu­sta­tius, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lu­cia, St Maarten, St Vin­cent, Turks and Caicos and T&T.

"If you look at oth­er large com­pa­nies that are op­er­at­ing here (in Bar­ba­dos), you will see they have al­so been re­new­ing their plant and ma­chin­ery. You need to in­vest. Once you have a long-term view, you don't go and spend mon­ey bad­ly, but you need to po­si­tion your­self for the fu­ture. That re­al­ly speaks to our con­fi­dence that there would be an eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery (in the Bar­ba­dos econ­o­my) and we will con­tin­ue to grow our mar­ket ef­fi­cient­ly.

"Our clients are com­ing to us with pro­pos­als, which sug­gest the pri­vate sec­tor is look­ing to con­tin­ue to po­si­tion them­selves for an eco­nom­ic turn­around," St Hill said.