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Bridgetown.- Harold Codrington, advisor to the Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados said tourism is not performing in the country as predicted and as a result foreign reserves are falling.
Codrington added that "at this time of year we should not be losing foreign reserves, because this is the high season for tourism,"
The economist told the Men's Education and Support Association (MESA) in a conference in Bridgetown that "if the economy is losing foreign reserves that mean something is dreadfully wrong: tourism is not performing,"
"Some people were predicting that tourism would have picked up in the winter season of 2009 into 2010, but it hasn't done that. So it is a hard time for tourism," said Codrington as he explained the various methods used to measure the performance of the sector.
"The international standard is, if you want your country to be taken seriously, it should have enough reserves to cover at least three months of imports. Right now we have about 21 weeks of imports", the advisor to the Governor said.
"We don't want that to fall, because the more it falls, the more we attract attention from rating agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF. And we don't want that!", he said.
Codrington identified foreign investment as a major source of development for Barbados. "When foreign investment declines, we are in big trouble; and this happened last year." (Source: Daily Nation)