The World Bank Group has en­dorsed a new Coun­try En­gage­ment Note for Bar­ba­dos, for­mal­ly mark­ing a new phase of en­gage­ment with the Caribbean coun­try and its re­turn to the bank’s In­ter­na­tion­al Bank for Re­con­struc­tion and De­vel­op­ment (IBRD). 

The Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion said Bar­ba­dos, with a pop­u­la­tion of about 300,000, reached the in­come thresh­old for grad­u­a­tion from the IBRD, the World Bank Group’s lend­ing arm that pro­vides fi­nanc­ing and pol­i­cy sup­port to mid­dle-in­come and cred­it­wor­thy low-in­come coun­tries – in 1994. 

“How­ev­er, the coun­try has ex­pe­ri­enced eco­nom­ic chal­lenges that have hin­dered its de­vel­op­ment since then,” the World Bank said. 

But, while the coun­try en­joyed steady growth for over a decade af­ter its grad­u­a­tion, the World Bank said the 2008-2009 Glob­al Fi­nan­cial Cri­sis hit the coun­try’s small and tourism-de­pen­dent econ­o­my hard, lead­ing to a pro­longed re­ces­sion. 

The World Bank said pub­lic debt in­creased from 77 to 158 per­cent of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP). 

It said these chal­lenges were ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the shock of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, fol­lowed by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, in­clud­ing vol­canic ash­fall from St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Hur­ri­cane El­sa in 2021. 

The World Bank said “an even more se­vere blow” oc­curred in June 2024, when Hur­ri­cane Beryl caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to vi­tal port and fish­eries in­fra­struc­ture, se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ing the tourism sec­tor. 

The bank said Bar­ba­dos’ over­ar­ch­ing medi­um-term de­vel­op­ment chal­lenge is im­ple­ment­ing a “sus­tain­able path to eq­ui­table and in­clu­sive growth, de­vel­op­ing cli­mate re­silience, and build­ing on past so­cial gains in an en­vi­ron­ment of fis­cal con­straints and lim­it­ed ac­cess to ex­ter­nal fi­nanc­ing for its de­vel­op­ment pro­grams.”

The in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion said The new Coun­try En­gage­ment Note is aligned with the plan to ad­dress these chal­lenges and serves as a frame­work for se­lec­tive­ly ad­dress­ing Bar­ba­dos’ de­vel­op­ment needs, eco­nom­ic re­silience, and cli­mate ac­tion ef­forts, “mark­ing the first World Bank Group strat­e­gy pre­pared for Bar­ba­dos in more than 30 years.” 

The new Coun­try En­gage­ment Note will fo­cus on knowl­edge and an­a­lyt­ics, pipeline pro­grams, and part­ner­ships on two key ob­jec­tives: Strength­en­ing cli­mate re­silience through dis­as­ter mit­i­ga­tion, and green­ing the en­er­gy and wa­ter sec­tors; and im­prov­ing con­di­tions for growth by at­tract­ing more pri­vate in­vest­ments, and im­prov­ing ed­u­ca­tion and skills, the World Bank said. 

In ad­di­tion, it said Bar­ba­dos can re­ly on the ad­van­tages and close co­op­er­a­tion be­tween World Bank Group in­sti­tu­tions, IBRD, the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion (IFC), and the Mul­ti­lat­er­al In­vest­ment Guar­an­tee Agency (MI­GA).

The World Bank said it will al­so work with a range of de­vel­op­ment part­ners “to en­hance im­pact, draw on ex­ist­ing knowl­edge and avoid cost­ly du­pli­ca­tion.” 

The World Bank Board of Di­rec­tors al­so re­cent­ly ap­proved the Beryl Emer­gency Re­sponse and Re­cov­ery Project. 

“The project will sup­port re­con­struc­tion ef­forts fol­low­ing Hur­ri­cane Beryl and en­hance the coun­try’s re­silience against fu­ture dis­as­ters and cli­mate change,” the World Bank said.

CMC/nk/kb/2025

WASH­ING­TON, Feb. 14,  CMC