Business
No new taxes in Barbados budget
But the increase in VAT and other measures from the 2010 Budget have not been rolled back either. Tourism and business are among the sectors that have been promised incentives.
Economy to grow
Minister Sinckler acknowledged that the measures and programmes outlined in the Budget would not please everybody, but said the country’s constrained fiscal and other circumstances did not allow that luxury.
“What we do know, however, is that Barbados is the sum total of its parts and achieving the lofty objectives of advanced status in the shortest possible time will not be achieved if we do not join hands to work together as Team Barbados,” he said.
“And as a great cricketing nation, we know that working as a team means combining resources just as it means each sacrificing self for the advancement of the team. This Budget is but yet another installment in the Plan of Team Barbados to bring us out of the recession even better than we went in. The plan is working.”
The Finance Minister said that overall economic growth stood at 2.1 percent at the end of the first half of 2011, “a healthy improvement to the 0.5 percent decline at the end of the second quarter 2010.”
It is projected that the economy will grow between 2 and 2.5 percent this year.
Sinckler said that increase is based on the apparent recovery in tourism over the last year. The industry is expected to grow in real terms by more than 2 percent in 2011.
Source: Caribbean360
