54 October 2016 - Business View Caribbean
gauge the health of a country’s economy.) “And high
interest rates relative to our GDP, as well. This puts us
in a very anemic position when you look at our growth
history over the last 40 or 50 years. It’s less than one
percent GDP growth, because a lot of our resources
go toward paying the interest on our high level of debt,
which is at about 125 percent of GDP. And even though
it is coming down, it is still quite high. The target is to
get to 100 percent by 2020. Our Debt Management
unit has to be vigilant across the various ministries to
ensure that there is no new debt being taken on, be-
cause the goal is to get the debt down rather than to
have it continue to grow as a percentage of GDP. So,
everything is scrutinized to ensure that we’re moving
in the correct direction.”
BVM: Does the Ministry also have a responsibility to
help increase the county’s employment rate, espe-
cially in the small to medium size enterprise sector?
Williams
: “There have been studies done in other coun-
tries across the world and the common wisdom is that
small to medium size enterprises generate most of the
jobs in an economy. Our small and medium size enter-
prises make up a large percentage of our economy. An
issue for them is their access to financing – the rates
tend to be high. In addition, they lack collateral most
of the time; they might not have the correctly written
financial statements; and they may not be able to pres-
ent their case fully to the banking sector. So, we have
been ensuring that that group gets financial training
so that they can understand cash flow, how they are to
present their business, etc. But we also have to ensure
that facilities are available for them. One of the ways
we’ve sought to do that is to channel funding through
our development bank which then lends to financial
institutions in order for them to use their infrastructure
to get that funding to those businesses at reduced lev-
els than they normally would get if they had walked
into a bank. And that’s why the focus is there in terms
of ensuring access and competitive interest rates.”
BVM: What are your Ministry’s goals for the next
