‘No need for BERT 2’

Carlos Forte, a Barbadian economist based in Canada, believes Barbados no longer needs to be in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.

He is also questioning the necessity of the second Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) plan initiated in 2022, while noting that regarding some important public finance matters, “the first IMF programme achieved its core objectives”.

Forte, who is a former senior economist in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs...