Business View Caribbean | October 2022

17 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 9, ISSUE 10 OFF I CE OF THE PR IME MINI STER OF BARBADOS advisor to the government, Persaud relays that the brainstorming started in 2018 when he was asked to look into using a $30 million housing credit fund to give mortgages to Barbadians who were having difficulty buying a home. “I worked out that that would probably only house 100 people. For $30 million, that didn’t seem to be very impactful. So, I said why don’t we just give them free land, use the money to buy land and they get free equity. We could house 400 people; it would be a one-off because we’ve then spent the $30 million.” With some opposition from other members of Government, Persaud says he was asked to go back to the drawing board. “I work very well with our prime minister that way,” he acknowledges. “She often takes my first idea and says, I think we could do this better. Her continuous stretching and prodding make it into a better idea, she’s very good at thinking where something could be better.” Spreading HOPE throughout Barbados and the Caribbean development project called HOPE, aimed at helping first-time home buyers, while also investing in renewable energy. The project awards eligible residents who would previously have been unable to secure a mortgage because they had no deposit or collateral with a piece of land, which they can then use as collateral towards a mortgage to construct a home on that land. “We then require, as part of our arrangement with them, for them to lend us their roof, where we will put solar panels,” Persaud says. “The solar panels pay us back for the land that we gave them, and this means that the scheme is entirely sustainable. We are targeting around 10,000 homes, which would be a major proportion of the people who don’t own their own homes in Barbados today. And the building of those 10,000 homes, focused on community construction firms, will have a major impact on our GDP.” Remarking that the HOPE project is one of the ideas he’s most proud of in his role as economic