The Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) has pledged its support toward a government initiative intended to help the 1 000 most vulnerable families manoeuver severe cost of living increases.
BCCI president Anthony Branker gave that commitment moments after emerging from a meeting of the Social Partnership on Monday, as he also assured that contrary to claims circulating on social media, there was no immediate threat of severe food shortages.
“The Chamber does support the plan which initially reaches out to 1 000 families. We fully support the plan to reach the ones who are most at a disadvantage and the Chamber will obviously be reaching out to its members to encourage them to support this initiative,” Branker told Barbados TODAY.
However, he declined to delve further into the details of the talks that concluded late Monday evening, saying that he preferred to defer to Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
Less than 24 hours prior, Mottley had promised to speak to the country about a number of initiatives that her administration would undertake to “cushion” the impact of the raging cost of living.
She, however, made it clear that the Government was unable to shield citizens from the challenges and that the country’s ability to emerge from the current period would depend heavily on people’s willingness to carry some of the burden.
“It is not only about what the Government can do, it is what we can do nationally. The pandemic has taught us that if we try to fight it based on Government resources alone, we wouldn’t have gotten through,” Mottley told reporters Sunday.
Despite the bitter realities of the current moment, the BCCI president assured Barbadians that there was no truth to social media messages in circulation warning of further commodity shortages.
He declared that although the global environment continued to be fraught with challenges, the current environment is largely consistent with what obtained throughout the course of the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine.
“I heard a voice note speaking to shipping lines not coming to Barbados or not moving around the world. There is no truth to that,” said Branker.
“We continue to have commodities available on island. We continue to have our challenges, but we have enough of the major commodities on island to continue to feed the island.”
The businessman added that the challenges relate to “inconsistent supply which we would have been facing, the same challenges with supply chains not flowing the way that they should and, therefore, delays with getting product into the island”.
“Obviously, we have commodities facing increased prices but generally those are not new and therefore nothing has changed. Everything has been on the same trajectory since the war started,” Branker added.
(TD)
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