With increasing frequency, new reports are published giving countries’ rankings in various areas. These are usually the result of long hours of tedious data collection, and no doubt strenuous site visits, involving long hours “in the field”.

One which, as you might imagine, comes to mind instantly is KPMG’s “Golf Benchmark Survey 2007”, which with a straight face promises to give us “benchmark indicators and performance of golf courses in the Caribbean region.” This particular report really makes me feel sympathetic to those who must have spent many long hours literally “in the field” compiling the empirical data.

But I have to confess that every time I pick up this no-doubt worthy report, a stupid grin breaks out across my mug and I really lose the analytical mood required to fore-age through the document. A little birdie is always telling me to do something else. So when I am able to get into the swing of it, I will report back to you on its findings.

Another report, released a week or two ago, requires heavy lifting in stats and economics, therefore leaving me feeling I had entered the Promised Land only to find that they speak a different language. But I struggled through, using my economics-equivalent of Pidgin English to translate and found the revelations to be worth a brief comment or two.

The report is a double-barreled one put out by the World Economic Forum in association with the INSEAD business school in Paris. In the first, which tracks how “with it” countries are in terms of ICT (information and communication technologies), Barbados made it to No. 38, second only to Chile in the Caribbean-Latin America area and beating out bigger guns in the Caribbean like Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago. The main drawback, say the report is the government, which is still behind in terms of what it calls “networked readiness”. That may change next year as the Inland Revenue department brings tax filing (both individual and corporate) online, and other agencies go online.

The second part of the report ranks overall global competitiveness, and Barbados came in at No. 50 out of 131 countries surveyed.

The top five “most problematic factors for doing business” in Barbados were “poor work ethic in national labour force”, followed by “inefficient government bureaucracy”, “foreign currency regulations”, “access to financing”, and “tax rates”.

It is at this point, that you begin to realise, if you didn’t already, about the potential inherent bias of reports like these.

I mean, should a country not have laws and regulations to protect its labour force from exploitation, and if we were to remove those which we do have now, far less implement the raft of new ones as the new administration is planning to do, would our country be deemed “more competitive”?

Then you wonder, if that be the case, more competitive for whom? Obviously for capital, for investors, for the people with the money. That’s all well and good, but is it really a zero sum game, in which whatever is gained by one side (investors) must be at the expense of the other (workers)?

That’s why this report highlights to me the essential policy challenges we face here in Barbados: Will every move which the government makes to protect the interests of workers or to keep at least some of Barbados’ land for Barbadians be interpreted by the investment community as anti-investment? Maybe so, once you are on the outside looking in, but a funny thing happens when a foreign investor settles on Barbados either to make it his or her personal or company residence, or both: They often become even louder than the Bajans in calling for limits on how much more investment this country can take.

Seems odd, doesn’t it? But when you think that the main attraction to many people is finding what they believe to be their secret island in the sun, it isn’t always appreciated when hordes of other wannabe expats descend on their sunswept paradise and put up houses right next door, or buy townhouses on the beach, thus resulting in the condo city going up all along the west coast.

Anyway, at least this time round, Barbados did better both in terms of global competitiveness and networked readiness than I personally expected. Let’s hope it leads to more investment down the road.

Terry Mayers- A brief tribute

I hope my editor will allow me a brief note here to extend my condolences to Terry Mayers’ widow and family on his untimely death. I got to know Terry fairly well as we worked together for just over two years on the CMC’s Primetime Caribbean broadcast. He was one of the very best journalists and overall communicators this nation has ever produced, as he effortlessly covered almost all areas of the journalist profession, although sports became his specialty. He was also very up on business matters, so there was always a lively conversation going on in the studio before and after and, okay, also during, that show. His temperant was so even that you hardly ever knew when he was upset about anything, and he enjoyed sharing his travel experiences with his colleagues. He was always encouraging of others, myself included, and could easily hold his own in telling a joke or in foolish banter with colleagues (actually, he might have been unrivalled in that).
Terry Mayers was one of a kind, and at the top of his profession. I will surely miss his witty and wise conservation, and he was certainly taken from us far too soon.