Barbados Debt Higher Than Cyprus Prompts Firing of 3,000
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Barbados will fire 3,000 public sector workers by March and freeze wages as the eastern Caribbean island’s debt burden soars and the International Monetary Fund says “urgent adjustments” are needed.
Barbados’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product reached 94 percent in September, the IMF said today, more than the 93 percent that forced Cyprus to seek a European Union-brokered bailout in March. Finance Minister Chris Sinckler told lawmakers yesterday that the government risks “further hemorrhaging” of its reserves and the local currency’s peg to the dollar if nothing is done.