Transcript of remarks delivered by the Honourable Mia Amor Mottley, Q.C., M.P., Prime Minister of Barbados at the 2019 Caribbean Forum
Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre
November 6, 2019
Good morning to each and every one of you. Let me first welcome those of you who are visiting, to Barbados. And for those who are here for the first time, in particular, let me say that this day of work is not counted as a visit, so you have to start fresh and come again.
I hope that we recognize that our regional brothers and sisters who are gathered here are here because we believe fundamentally that it is only through collective action that we are going to make the difference to our people. This conference this morning is timely. And ironically, it is only this week that the Secretary-General of the United Nations penned a piece for the Financial Times that looked at the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, to which the president of the Caribbean Development Bank just referred. And one of the things that struck me is that the world truly is cyclical, not just in economic performance, but in its adherence to the principles that ultimately guide our behavior. For in his piece, he reflected on the inability of governments to be able to find sufficient financing to meet the challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals included in which, of course, is the existential threat of the climate crisis.
We in the Caribbean are not surprised because we have in the post-independence movement, held firm to the belief that each citizen matters, and we have seen the rest of the world come and go with respect to what ought to matter in terms of the development trajectory of nations. Mercifully, we are back towards sustainable and inclusive growth and growth that ultimately reflects on the ability for each of our citizens to become the best that they can be. But that is not going to happen by magic, nor by serendipity and we have recognize that we are required to play the hand that we have even if, in the words of the great Robert Nesta Marley, “we draw bad card”.
That doesn’t preclude us from the obligation of finding all of the resources that we have to work together. And why am I speaking in this manner? Because fundamentally what we confront in today’s world, regionally and internationally, is a crisis of will. Do we have the will to make the distance to solve the problems that we face? And I ask this question because to hear this morning that the primary topic for initial consideration is the pace of regional integration must have my colleague Heads and the Secretary-General feeling a certain way to use a colloquialism, for we have known for too long what is required and we have known instinctively and in practice what the IMF papers will share with us this morning; that greater pace of integration with the mobility of all of the factors, but in particular, people mobility is what is required in order to be able to create the conditions conducive to growth.
I smile because I perhaps have sounded like a stuck record for the last 18 months with respect to the simple message that rather than being consumed with the jealousy that comes from national identity or national space, that we need to wake up and smell the coffee and to appreciate that what is required is greater numbers of persons coming to work every day within each of our countries in order to be able to expand production significantly.
Let us be real and I forgive myself because every time I think that I am repeating over and over and there is no opportunity for progress, someone comes up and gets it and understands that the numbers just don’t add up. And what numbers are those?
Suriname. Bigger than the Netherlands. Can’t make six hundred thousand people. The Netherlands is at 17 million. I see the United Kingdom High Commissioner here. Her country is the same size as Guyana. Guyana is struggling even with the prospect of oil to reach eight hundred thousand and the United Kingdom has 66 million people. Belize, three hundred and eighty thousand, the size of Israel. Israel has eight million. And Barbados, of course, barely smaller than Singapore. We have 300,000 we hope by the end of the next census, next year and Singapore five million and rising.
I make this point because what is required is a will to ensure that we have a floor within the region such that the worst aspects of xenophobia can be tamed and we can get on with the business of managing migration in the best tradition of a country like Canada that has made sure that it has been able to transition in spite of the lack of population through a consistent program of managed migration.
Those heads who stood before us agreeing to bring together as one, a community of sovereign nations, did so with the clear understanding that the constraints of size would forever act as an inhibitor to our capacity for growth. But the bottom line is that what has stood in the way is simply the will. In many instances, the public sensitisation and education has been done, and we have therefore to ask ourselves, are we prepared for the considerations given by Dr. Ram of the Caribbean Development Bank as to what could be the fate of the region by 2050? Are we prepared to be considered potentially as the poorest region in the world?
Now I say that conscious that the existential threat before us and I don’t speak of climate change anymore. I speak of the climate crisis because that is what it is for us. Are we prepared to add to what I have just discussed, the reality that the climate crisis is forcing us to choose between building resilience and moving on a development trajectory?
Now, this raises other questions and you must forgive me because at the core of it, I am still a lawyer, not a financier.
And when you consider that our countries have not in any way added to the greenhouse gas emissions in any appreciable manner as compared to the damage and the development of the new possibility of climate refugees becoming part and parcel of our regional vocabulary on an ongoing basis, then you begin to appreciate that the conversation needs to change. And the conversation needs to change because with the best will in the world, we do not have the fiscal space nor the financial capacity to fundamentally tackle climate crisis in the way in which it needs tackling.
And we ignore that there are not only the large stunning impact of loss in the form of storms and hurricanes, which I call the heart attacks, but there is also the insidious version which comes in the form of Sargassum Weed and droughts – crisis in groundwater supply that the region continues to face. I know from where I stand the difficult decisions that we have to make as to where we allocate resources and it is no different in St. Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, Guyana, the Bahamas. It’s no different. And we do so without any prospect of the Warsaw mechanism for loss and damage so established to have the world’s countries agree on progress without any delineation of what that potentially could mean to ease the burden of countries that are already suffering for the last three decades, chronic underperformance with respect to economic growth.
And as if that were not enough, having been lulled into the determination that you move from a monarch crop economy into services 30, 40 years ago, having performed as the West Indies team did, having learnt cricket decades ago, not necessarily today, we were then told that we need to change and we need to change our tax policies because we are viewed by too many as tax havens. We maintain that we have not, and in our own case in Barbados, we are not a tax haven and nor are we a low tax jurisdiction.
Any country that taxes 28 cents cannot be viewed as a low tax jurisdiction.
What we have done is to determine how we want to be able to tax. And it is our fundamental view that over the course of the next two to three decades, quite frankly, that the world will move more and more towards the taxation of assets and the taxation of transactions simply because of how the world is organized in the same way that we saw the evolution of the joint stock company into the limited liability corporation over the course of centuries because the mechanism for the conduct of business and the protection of legal liability changes to suit the environment within which it is functioning.
Now we have no difficulty with others reflecting views, but where we come from, we have a difficulty with name and shame. And you will forgive me if, as a woman, I have an even greater difficulty with it, because that is a burden that we’ve had to carry since the beginning of mankind.
You’ll equally forgive me for believing that if there is to be change of that much structural nature and of that magnitude, that there ought to be a time frame for discussion and adjustment rather than simply using the power of size and might to effect change. This is part and parcel of the reality that we have faced. We cannot be on the same side and then when it matters most, we ignore the realities of what this region faces.
Since 1989, we have been calling through our association with the Commonwealth for a Vulnerability Index. We said that it is impossible to be able to meet the needs of the region without appreciating that the simple measurement of a per capita income and GDP is inappropriate.
How many more times must the region speak before the international institutions to which we belong with which we share common purpose, hear us and help us in the transition of this criteria for basic survival and access to concessional resources.
And then we must face the other issue. That vulnerability is not something that we hold on to with pride. Vulnerability, regrettably, is our reality and while the regional integration movement was intended to be able to minimize the impact, the negative impact of vulnerability, the climate crisis throws it back at us with a ferocity that is unparalleled in our history.
Now, that may require of us a different conversation within the context of CARICOM, which is not for today. But what I do say is that the issue of will; will to be able to be faithful to the precepts agreed to internationally and to flesh them out; will to be able to reflect in our actions, the moral leadership that is absolutely critical if we are to carry along not just the members of our population in the context of inclusive and sustainable growth, but our stakeholder partners, as we move.
And an appreciation that many of the things that the region faces now to deepen the integration movement are not immediately within our grasp, because we have to be spending money on other things and the prospect of what lies ahead, particularly with the increasing numbers of uninsured and uninsured within our populations, makes it even more difficult. And to what do I refer?
In order to deepen integration in this region, and in order to counter the worst aspects of xenophobia, we need to facilitate greater communication and greater movement. We need to be able to have a maritime bridge. The Canadians in the 1950s and 60s recognize that this region could not do it on its own and assisted us with two boats that have become legendary in our history: The Federal Maple and the Federal Palm.
I say legendary in our history because I’ve never seen them. I don’t know anything about them and my generation, born for the most part at the time of independence, is unaware of these sea bridges.
But our determination to be able to create them again is absolutely critical if we are going to see the sale of produce across the region become a daily reality so that farmers in …… or in Castries, or in Kingstown, or in Roseau can get their produce to market, can supply the hotels in Barbados or St. Kitts or Antigua on a daily basis. The determination of the CARICOM Secretariat for us to be able to wrestle down a 5 billion U.S. dollar import bill is what makes the difference to the household and family.
But our failure to treat to the logistics of the movement of this produce is denying the opportunities to families within this region.
Equally, our inability to reduce our costs of communication by artificially placing costs and prices on us for talking across the region, when invariably if you pick up this phone and I go to do certain things, it comes up as Jamaica. Why? Because the switch from which it is operated is not located in Barbados. And if it is not located in Barbados, why am I paying roaming charges when I go to Jamaica, when I am in Jamaica?
The single domestic space in telecommunications is absolutely vital for the successful integration of our people because at the end of the day, governments don’t trade. It is people through companies and households that do so. And of course, ultimately the ability to knowable opportunities in each other’s countries. I almost tire now of giving these speeches and I tire of giving them because progress is too slow. And I asked myself, why is progress slow? And it comes right back down to where I started.
Fundamentally, it is about the will to make that difference. I believe that this conference and I’d like to thank the International Monetary Fund and the Caribbean Development Bank for bringing us together in another forum to begin to hopefully, cause, not us in this room because I’d like to believe that we all get it, but it cause people to recognize that the ability to change depends on our will to stay the course and to do the things that are necessary to make that definable difference.
I am inspired by our own journey in Barbados and it has not by any means or stretch of the imagination, been easy. Sixteen months ago, we stood in that room upstairs on the 1st of June, exactly one week after the election had been declared, and we announced that we were approaching the International Monetary Fund with a program and that we were suspending our international debt payments. With me were the representatives of the labour movement and the representatives of the private sector and other members of the government.
Yesterday we launched our international debt exchange, which will hopefully bring to an end within the next few weeks, the debt restructuring saga of this country taking us from the third most indebted country in the world at one hundred and seventy six percent, including the contingent liabilities that we found that were in the vicinity of about 19 percent of GDP with one hundred and fifty seven percent of publicly acknowledged debt. With this debt restructuring, our debt to GDP ratio will come down we believe to 114 percent. It is roughly at one hundred and eighteen percent after we successfully concluded the domestic debt exchange.
What is required in this country now and throughout the region is sustained performance and restructuring and measures to boost growth at all levels. Barbados does not have enough people producing on a daily basis to be able to make the transformation that it needs to carry us to the next level. And that is why on a sustained basis, I take the responsibility as lead prime minister for CARICOM, single market and single economy as passionately as I take the responsibility for the domestic affairs of this country, for the two are inextricably linked and bound. That is why we have fought hard to bring to the table the private sector at the regional meetings because it is now the private sector and the labour movement that will make the definable difference to production integration such that we can have regional transformation and sustainable and inclusive growth.
I ask those of us who are here to recognize that our battles are large already and we have to have a sustained programme of training to be able to bring our people fully into the third decade of the 21st century. It is not going to be overnight as it never is with human beings. But let us not make our job that much more difficult by failing to recognize that there are certain things that are institutional barriers to us. The fact that the Bahamas cannot go on access concessional funding this morning after Dorian as a middle-income country ought to be of grave concern to those who have a sense of moral compass.
The fact that we continue to have dictates imposed on us for the structural changes to our tax system with minimal notice and minimal time in circumstances where we’ve seen the consequences in the middle of an IMF program to our corporation taxes. But we do it and we remain steadfast in what we are doing because we know that with time and with the legacy of resilience in our blood, we shall make it. And the fact, my friends, that in spite of all that mankind can say or do, there is a force out there that will do more to us that within the context of 48 hours can change our lived reality completely and requires of us within this community, therefore, to not only see and talk about regional transformation, but to begin to come to deal with questions of human security because if there are climate refugees, then we have an unstable neighborhood, and if we have an unstable neighborhood, then we have matters of human security to attend to.
I trust and pray that our conversations today will cause all of us, us in the region, us internationally, to redouble our efforts and to recognize that that saying, “that time does not wait on any man,” is not just a saying, but has now become part of our reality.
Martin Luther King said it best when he referred to the fierce urgency of now. I suspect that he would have said it even better if he lived in today’s times. I pray God’s blessings on our proceedings over the course of today, and I thank the IMF for not only coming, but also on behalf of the people of Barbados, I thank you for having the confidence to allow us to chart our own way, and I thank the people of Barbados for walking hand in hand, sharing the burden and recognizing that we didn’t get there overnight, but if we stay the course, we shall make this journey ours and we shall give thanks to those who helped us along the way.
Thank you.