If it is one area of our national affairs that cries for change then it’s the economy. The current economic crisis we face is a direct result of the failure of our leadership over the years to bring vision and change to the economy.

Successive governments have been quite satisfied to rest on the laurels of sugar and tourism and a bit of offshore business, and failed to seek out new avenues for the expansion of industry and commerce.

To his credit, Prime Minister Errol Barrow did seek to establish a data-processing industry during his time. I am not aware of any similar efforts by any leader since then to open new avenues of employment for Barbadians.

Even in the industry that had become the signature of our economy, sugar, we have behaved with the same inertia. Up until relatively recently, we were content to grow sugar cane and process the juice into brown sugar and molasses for export. After all, that is what our colonial masters taught us to be: producers of primary materials to be re-processed by others and returned to us as refined goods.

Well, we all know what happened to sugar. From a high of over 200 000 tons in the pre-independence period, production this year (2017) is not expected to exceed ten thousand.

Rum producers who depended on local molasses to make their coveted spirit have been forced to import molasses from overseas. Current attempts to salvage the sugar industry are

rooted more in a sentimental attachment to the industry than in a realistic view of the importance and future of the industry at this time.

Meanwhile, there’s a crop we’ve been growing here for centuries, with the potential to rival sugar in its foreign exchange earning capacity. I speak of West Indian Sea Island Cotton. WISIC – as it’s known - is the longest, strongest and silkiest cotton in the world.

On the international cotton market, it is five times more expensive than the next best grade cotton and apparently has such a high reputation that there is no shortage of buyers.

Sea Island Cotton

The wonderful thing about this cotton is that it can only be grown in the Caribbean, since it requires the right amount of sunshine, rain and other climatic conditions to flourish. These conditions are only available in the Caribbean.

So do we have a thrivin WISIC industry here making millions in foreign exchange annually? No. But we’ve been talking about it for the last 25 years – just like we’ve been talking about black belly lamb for the last 40 years.

* We need to come to a realistic position on sugar and explore the possibility of replacing it with cotton – not to become primary producers of cotton, but to become producers of Sea Island Cotton textiles.

The field of information technology is another that cries out for exploitation by a country with highly educated people sitting on the doorsteps of the major North American and European markets. Why have we not sought to maximize on the lucrative computer technology industry like Singapore and India?

These two countries make huge earnings from information technology. India is now said to be one of the largest I.T capitals of the world. The industry, launched in the early 1970’s, earns billions of dollars in foreign exchange and employs hundreds of thousands.

Exports of soft-wear products and services are made to nearly a hundred countries, with North America accounting for more than 60% of that. Singapore, was once an impoverished British colony like Barbados. In size it is less than twice the size of Barbados and like us has few natural resources. Today it is one of the major international computer technology centres in Asia and the world.

Singapore Information Technology

* We need to explore the prospects of creating a thriving soft-ware sector, which, at a time like this, would have been the salvation of the hundreds of young people leaving school each year and looking for meaningful employment.

* A future government needs to revert to the ‘industrialization by invitation’ formula used by Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and our own Errol Barrow in the 1960’s. Once trained, our people can effectively run the soft ware businesses themselves, should the investors quit when their tax concessions run out.

Significant employment and foreign exchange gains might also be made by maximizing the potential of local industry. Our public transport sector is one area where this can be done. We have a Barbadian manufacturing company called Acme.

It makes mini bus chasses and chasses for the smaller Transport Board buses. There must be very good reasons why we don’t use this company to build our bus chasses rather than pay Brazil millions in foreign currency to make them for us.

I see no reason why we can’t. They are already making chasses for the private operators and the Transport Board. All they would need to do is make the bus bodies a bit longer and wider. My research tells me that the previous Minister of Transport actually made an announcement to the effect that they’d be ceasing the importation of buses and having Acme make them.

* Well, it’s about time to implement this plan.

The old adage, “never put all of your eggs in one basket” still holds true. We need to increase the number of baskets in our economy.

Olutoye Walrond