The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is predicting a major tourism resurgence for Barbados and the region that will require governments to “talk and chew gum” as they balance the economic recovery with public health measures.
President of the multilateral development financier group, Mauricio Claver-Carone revealed that early pandemic concerns of a ‘lost decade’ are slowly making way for more positive predictions, but countries must place greater emphasis on economic recovery.
“When I was first sworn in as president of the IDB in October 2020, I said that my biggest concern at the time was that we were going to have another lost decade in the region. We had seen the biggest contraction of the economy in 200 years and they’ve been lost decades with a lot less than that. But I can tell you, a year later, I am no longer concerned that we are going to have a lost decade in the region. We’re seeing GDP uptick, you’re seeing different forecasts suggesting that global GDP is more sluggish than the region,” Claver-Carone told a press conference at the bank’s Barbados country office.
“We are clearly entering the recovery phase and yes, we still have to follow the new variants etcetera. I think Barbados is at a place where vaccination rates are high and in every place that we are seeing high vaccination rates there’s still obviously cases that are breaking through, but we also need to look at the mortality rates and hospitalization. So we need to follow the data so we can be ahead of the curve, but in doing so, we also have to be able to walk and chew gum and we have to think about the recovery and we have to look for it,” he added.
The IDB president’s comments come at a time when two of the country’s leading business organisations, the Barbados Private Sector Association (BPSA) and the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) are calling for the removal of COVID-19 restrictions that continue to hinder the full re-opening of the economy.
Over the last two days, Claver-Carone, along with Chief of Staff Jessica Bedoya, met with Prime Minister Mia Mottley and key members of her team, as well as President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr Gene Leon on shared priorities like climate resilience and select IDB projects locally.
Claver-Carone revealed that the region is on the cusp of a massive increase in new visitors from the United States of America and lauded officials here for aggressively pursuing and securing new routes out of the United States mainland.
“In speaking with the Ministry of Tourism as well, I am hopeful. I think Barbados, Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole, have a great, unique opportunity in regard to the tourism recovery… We are seeing tourism coming back,” he said.
“In the numbers, we are seeing more tourists come and we are seeing a higher proportion of American tourists come than before the pandemic.
We anticipate in the next three-five years there’s going to be a larger, newer concentration of US tourists to Latin America and the Caribbean, which is a great opportunity for Barbados than before the pandemic, because travellers will be more skeptical of going farther to places like Europe, Asia, etcetera,” he added.
In fact, the IDB president said that preliminary statistics are already showing an unusual increase in U.S travellers over U.K travellers coming to the country over the “past few months”.
He added that the ‘‘walk and chew gum’ needed to balance economic fortunes with public health in a pandemic, should extend to economic diversification beyond tourism.
“Tourism is important. Tourism is a key aspect of the economy but it should not be the entire economy. We’re trying to help, but we are not in the luxury phase where tourism is doing well. We’re actually in a pandemic and post-pandemic phase where we want you to have tourism recovery, so you can have your base, but then ensure that you are not dependent on any particular industry in that regard. So I think that the recovery is a unique opportunity to not only rebuild and focus on growth but to do so in a sustainable and inclusive way,” he added. (KS)
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