Barbados is continuing its efforts to build alliances with “like-minded” states around the world other than those in North America and Europe to create new relationships to drive this country’s commercial and cultural diplomacy agenda.
Senior Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kerrie Symmonds told the House of Assembly on Monday at the start of the day’s sitting that Barbados will during the new financial year, open an embassy in Ireland as it seeks to expand its footprint of 14 embassies and three consulates and capitalise on its heritage relationship with that country. The Ireland/Barbados relationship has transformed into an investment partnership, he said, and an opportunity to grow in this regard. He pointed to the Sandy Lane Hotel investment as one example of the potential for the ties to bear fruit. He said too, that the direct flights via Aer Lingus to the island open doors to growing our tourism product.
Symmonds said it is important that Barbados creates new relationships in non-resident accredited countries across the world as he pointed to diplomatic reach in Ghana, Kenya and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where platforms have been successfully established for economic diversification and economic transformation.
The minister said locating an office in the UAE has given Barbados a reach into the Gulf States for the first time in its history at a time when this country is trying to build out a platform for natural gas exploration off Barbados’ shores and even for oil.
“The reality is that it is a strategic alliance with a set of countries whose bread and butter is in fact that type of endeavour.”
Symmonds said that the High Commissioner to Kenya has now been accredited to Rwanda further expanding Barbados’ footprint into the African continent and specifically into Central Africa. That move, he explained, has opened potential opportunities for Barbados diversifying into the development of pharmaceuticals manufacture here.
The foreign minister also spoke of a move to position commercial and cultural officers in the ministry and diplomatic offices to build out the reach in those areas.
The limitation at this point is cost, Symmonds later told the House which sat in the Standing Finance Committee debating the foreign affairs head which has been allocated close to $66 million in this year’s Estimates.
“It can’t all happen in one fell swoop because frankly we do not have the money, but we have to get to that point,” he added.
“We are building people-to-people contact and this is very important.”
Minister Symmonds, who said his ministry was happy and willing to give an account of its mandate for the first time in such a forum as the Appropriation Bill debate, also noted that “a glaring weakness” of the ministry has been the failure to tell its own story. “The light is being hidden under a bushel,” he conceded. But he also commented on the time it has taken for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be able to share its work in the forum such as the Estimates debate where the mandate could be shared and interrogated.
Later in the opening session, Symmonds told the Chamber, “We have not really been telling our story in terms of what the missions are achieving and that is something that we have to correct.
“I have taken a position, now enshrined in our Estimates, that the cost of maintaining missions abroad has to be transcended by, not equaled, the value of the technical cooperation that the mission is bringing to Barbados or the value of the trade and commerce that the mission is stimulating for the benefit of Barbados or the financial assistance which is being garnered by the efforts wherever that mission is for the benefit of Barbados.
“It can be a collection of them but gone forever, must be the days when you have a mission but that mission is not being held accountable in terms of the dollars and cents value of what the technical cooperation derived for the benefit of Barbados…There has to be a way in which we are more accountable and hold the missions to that level of accountability. However, it is not just a simple question of that level of accountability but our own accountability to the taxpayers who finance the efforts of Barbados’ diplomatic agenda.”(SBP)
The post Barbados targeting Ireland for diplomatic ties appeared first on Barbados Today.