I’m afraid that I’ll begin to sound like a broken record if I touch on what has unfolded on island these past two weeks. Firmly, the solutions to this lie in our economic problems but in as long as we continue to separate social from economic issues. Economists like myself are always challenged to speak to solutions. My quotes to the press are mostly littered with them over the years. And there’s nothing better than a thriving economy and a observant government to help in combating the widening social gap. That gap has led to the rising tensions and violently criminal activity in Barbados, in my opinion.

I spent some time thinking through solutions over the past few weeks. Fortunately, some colleagues of mine had pointed me to the outline of a report done by the team at Deloitte Barbados in 2019. I believe it to have been either commissioned for the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) or due to some advocacy by the BHTA on a related matter. That would be the issue concerning tax concessions to stand-alone restaurants and other food service businesses in Barbados.

The report conveyed a sense that a significant portion of economic growth could be pursued since there is a deep tie to those sorts of restaurants and the tourism industry. If on island visitors spend increases then these businesses should benefit from this. That has not been the case for sometime even with record arrivals and growing spend per visitor since 2018 (Give or take the pause during the Covid-19 Pandemic )

You all might have read that the government’s recent nod to grant a first stand-alone restaurant duty-free access to its wines, spirits and imported prime cuts. It shifts a long-standing fault line in Barbados’ hospitality model. Tourism Minister, the Hon. Ian Gooding-Edghill confirmed this approval at a press briefing just last week and hinted that several more applications are already inching through the Ministry’s paperwork.

For two decades the Tourism Development Act (TDA) has showered hotels with customs waivers and even land-tax rebates, rightly to spur bricks, mortar and jobs. Its language is crystal clear: approved projects may “obtain supplies without paying customs duty” for up to fifteen years. An amendment in 2014 went further, letting hotel restaurants import and locally purchase food and drink duty-free if those items “are required for the operation or development of the tourism product”. Independent eateries were left out of consideration.

It gets more pertinent when taken along with some hard numbers. I feel as though numbers can mislead in an effort to stretch a narrative. However, the deeper insights provided are useful. Excise on alcohol alone can run to 60 per cent before VAT is added and—so Deloitte reported back in 2019—overall tax and duty can double the landed cost of certain wines or proteins. That penalty helps to explain why the fashionable trio of Cin Cin, Primo and Hugo’s shuttered five years ago, a closure management blamed squarely on “unfair” hotel concessions and rising consumption taxes. Jobs vanished overnight.

Deloitte’s survey and paper found that 82 per cent of stand-alone restaurants make most of their money in foreign currency and take the lion’s share of bookings between November and March. Collectively, the sample employed 753 people—more than many boutique hotels—and imported roughly $3 million in dutiable meat and drink annually. Those figures sit in a different economic climate now: long-stay arrivals jumped nearly 18 per cent in 2023 as travel roared back, while real GDP grew 4.4 per cent on tourism’s shoulders. Unemployment, having “officially” fallen to 7.1 per cent in late 2022, is still flirting with pre-crisis lows. Though we know my contentions with unemployment figures, the date still implies that retained restaurant job therefore matters. Tourists will use any restaurant in the community that is up to their tastes and standards.

So what exactly do the concessions buy us? First, price credibility. Visitors comparison-shop dinner tabs just as ruthlessly as airfares, and when a hotel restaurant’s grilled salmon is subsidised while its beach-road equivalent is not, the “value-for-money” narrative cracks. Level tax treatment allows menu prices to converge, nudging spend upwards rather than driving diners towards the all-inclusive buffet. And there are truthfully a handful of foreign interests that benefit unfairly from this premise. Second, domestic linkages deepen. The BHTA’s new data-sharing pact with the Barbados Agricultural Society aims to align chefs’ orders with farmers’ planting calendars—an initiative born out of this past year’s egg shortage. Duty savings free cash to pay the premium for local produce, tightening that loop.

Third comes the fiscal arithmetic and this is often misstated. Yes, customs revenue dips when duties are waived, but the Central Bank credits buoyant transaction-based taxes—principally Value Added Tax (VAT)—for cushioning the Treasury in 2023. Cheaper inputs lift turnover; higher turnover lifts VAT, tips, income-tax withholding. Meanwhile, healthy reserves of 31.6 weeks’ import cover underline that foreign-exchange leakages are not an immediate concern, and the first-quarter 2025 update shows cover edging above 32 weeks. In other words, the macro buffers can cope even though a significant portion of those were not earned but borrowed. The country can still access them in case of emergency.

Still, guardrails matter. The TDA already lets the minister suspend or revoke a permit if concessions are misused. Officials would be wise to publish an annual register of beneficiary eateries and the share of revenue they earn in foreign currency; sunlight keeps honest operators honest. You may recall that, currently, a survey is meant to be completed by beneficiaries of concessions, so the platform for publishing this information should not be difficult, logically. Technically, it may be. There is also a philosophical wrinkle: Barbados slaps high duties on imported meat precisely to encourage local substitutes. A sensible schedule of relief—perhaps zero-rating wines and spirits but only discounting certain premium cuts—could preserve that farm-to-table signal.

All told, extending breaks to qualifying stand-alone restaurants looks like low-hanging policy fruit. It tackles a documented inequity, shores up year-round employment, and sprinkles fresh capital into an already resurgent sector without blowing a hole in the Budget. If diligence wins out over inertia—and if restaurateurs plough their savings back into décor, training and local ingredients—then the next visitor who snaps a plate of flying fish on a wooden deck will be advertising not just our beaches but our policymaking, too. Hopefully, this works wonders for employment and entrepreneurial opportunities down the line. Perhaps, in a season or two, we will shrug and say: of course the concessions were widened; the wonder is that it took us this long.