Prime Minister Owen Arther

This was disclosed last night by Prime Minister Owen Arthur as he wound up the three-day debate in the House of Assembly on the 2004 Financial and Economic Policy Statement.

The anticipated fireworks against the Opposition never materialised as Arthur instead calmly defended the measures he outlined in the Budget to change the islands export culture.

The new Sandy Lane complex will involve construction of 111 villas over a ten- to 15-year period on 280 acres stretched mainly across the Green Monkey Golf Course.

Sources last night said villas would cost upward of $10 million, including the land. Construction on the first set will not get going until after the Green Monkey, which is already completed, is opened sometime in 2005.

Arthur said Barbados must stop its love-hate relationship with such projects because of the politics of envy which caused it to have an anti-developmental approach.

He assured the House that there were some things which Government had to do such as capping land taxes, noting that most of the investment here was coming from Britain where there was such a cap.

We are not doing this because we want to pass money to white, wealthy people, he explained, but because these people come from a culture that is accustomed to a cap on land tax.

Arthur said Barbados was at an interesting and delicate stage but he was not underestimating the balance of payments problem, saying he would not play with it or cause any problem in the form of a loss of reserves through the actions of the Government.

We are putting in place measures to change the export culture, broaden the export base, he added.

The Prime Minister said he accepted the point made by Leader of the Opposition Clyde Mascoll that those measures would take time.

He stressed, however, that for a country like Barbados, the best and most immediate means of dealing with balance of payments issues was not on the current account but on capital inflows.

According to him, long-term private capital inflows were some of the best means by which a country could deal with balance of payments difficulties.

Arthur said Barbados was at a happy stage where there were a large number of high-quality, high-value projects which the country must get serious about implementing to boost reserves and foreign exchange earnings.

He cited approved projects such as the retirement villages in St Peter, another for the Barbados Association of Retired Persons in St Philip; a project to improve water distribution in the north; Phase III of the Sugar Hill project and the transformation of Harrisons Point into a base for inland tourism.