Both Sides of The Coin: The Story of The Central Bank of Barbados 1972-2017

178 remaining Board members. 94 King was quick to assure the public that the Board still had enough members to attend to the Bank’s business. The resignations of the Board members provoked a discussion about central bank autonomy. The headline in one editorial was “Restore autonomy of Central Bank”. Noting that the Bank seemed to be losing its operational autonomy, the writer asked, “Why didn’t the Bank play a much more important role in bringing the nation’s poor financial situation to light?” This editorial elicited a response from King in the form of a letter to the editor. It pointed out that Section 49 of the Central Bank Act did not provide for the publication of the respective positions of the Bank and the minister of finance in a case where the Bank felt that the minister was not pursuing appropriate policies. However, a former senior Central Bank official suggested that the Bank was not independent enough and needed more ammunition by which to limit its financing of Government operations. The Bank’s credibility was also called into question, with some writers expressing views such as “Central Bank slips” and “Central Bank flawed”. During a press conference in January the Bank’s spokesmen said, inter alia , that it was mainly Government policy that had halted the slide in foreign reserves. However, one politician described this statement as “irresponsible nonsense” and evidence of the “Bank’s crisis of credibility” and willingness to act as a “spin doctor” on behalf of the Government. It was only after the loan from the IMF was secured that the public attacks on the Bank subsided. The 1993 NIR issu e At the quarterly press conference on October 19, 1993, Governor Springer revealed that between July and September the NIR had declined by $71 million. He said that a 21 per cent rise in imports was to blame and called on financial institutions, in particular credit unions, to exercise greater restraint on lending to individuals. The reaction to these statements was attention-grabbing. One political column advised the governor to “leave the credit unions alone”. But almost all of the commentators focused on the fall in reserves and suggested that