Barbados is classified as a small island developing state (SIDS). International agencies such as the UN, would make us believe that the lack of financial resources is the main reason for our lack of development. The principle here is that the more money we have or the more money we can access will determine how far we can go as a country. This is true to a certain extent. Financial resources are important to any society but financial resources alone cannot ensure the sustainable development of a country. We are aware of many individuals who received millions of dollars but ended up losing them all due to bad personal and financial decisions. The same is true for a country.
Millions of dollars can come into the coffers of a country but bad decisions can make those millions useless. One such bad decision that Barbados has made as a country since independence is the decision to play partisan politics. Partisan politics is fine during election time and during parliamentary debates but practicing partisan politics in the implementation of public policy and the allocation of public funds can hinder the development of any country.
In Barbados, we have normalized the bad practice of one government (political party) spending money to produce policies, white papers and other public policy documents to address certain issues and the successive government (other political party) spending more money to produce policies, white papers and public policy documents to address the same issues. That is a blatant waste of public financial resources, yet Barbadians are happy to allow our governments to continue to increase unnecessary spending while the price of food, housing and gas increases.
That is too heavy a price for us Barbadians to continue to pay.