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

276 were in default because our other creditors might then have called their loans. Whether we were in default was a complex legal matter, but we were able, with the help of our legal advisers in New York to persuade the Japanese not to say so. The fact is that we staved off a devaluation because the Bank provided strong leadership and because leadership was evident in other entities. The costs of avoiding devaluation were high, but resolve, pride and a little fear brought out the hero in all of us. Facing up to the IMF also showed leadership. Although they doubted our resolve they supported us in maintaining the value of the Barbados dollar if we met certain difficult performance criteria. That experiment worked because there was universal opposition to devaluation, despite profound differences on almost every other issue. Barbadians are loathe to publicly take pride in their accomplishments. But, truth be told, compared with many other countries, we possess much foresight, vision and creativity. This is why we were once classified by the United Nations Development Programmme as having the highest quality of life among developing countries and a higher quality than some developed ones. It is difficult to argue that Barbadians have the facility to inspire each other and that the Bank contributed anything to that attribute. But the Bank has always placed high priority on the need for excellence. I prepared as carefully for press conferences as for Board meetings because it was necessary to strike the right balance between realism and optimism. The Research Department spent much time checking our data, our conclusions and our projections. One problem here was that so much of the data we published came from other sources. Once, when this checking was held up by my absence from the country, we were accused of deliberately delaying publication of information to protect the Government’s position. Not everyone felt that public information was as important as policy-making. However, scholarly research convinced us that accurate and up-to-date information was vital to economic decision-making, public confidence and the achievement of national goals. Education and training were key to the development of the Bank’s full potential; training for the Bank's staff was maintained at a high level