Weekly column
The Bridgetown Brief.
A short weekly dispatch on what is moving in Caribbean economies and business: money, work, data, AI and the long view. Plain enough for the general reader, substantive enough for the practitioner. Every issue, in order.
26 issues to dateNext issue Monday 19 OctoberRSS feed →
Issue№ 26
The Surplus and the Interest Bill
The Dominican Republic's 2027 budget bill, sent to Congress on 23 September, plans a central government deficit of 3.4 per cent of GDP. Before interest it shows a surplus of RD$24,045.6 million, 0.3 per cent of GDP. Interest takes RD$351,327.1 million, 3.7 per cent of GDP, so the government would borrow to pay its creditors and nothing else. The fiscal risk report bound into the same bill finds that budgeted primary balances were over-forecast by 0.62 per cent of GDP on average between 2009 and 2019, and by 0.48 per cent between 2021 and 2025. A week after the bill went in, the central bank raised its policy rate for the first time since October 2022.
Issue№ 25
The Rate and the Rebuild
The Bank of Jamaica raised its policy rate to 6.0 per cent from 29 September, and one of its reasons is government recovery spending. The Independent Fiscal Commission's review of April to June shows that spending running well behind plan. Only J$27.6 billion of a J$184.9 billion capital budget was spent in the quarter, J$17.3 billion below budget, and the Commission expects the reconstruction authority's J$30 billion to have minimal impact in FY2026/27. Pay is the spending that is coming. A wage agreement signed on 27 August raises public sector pay 5.0 per cent in each of FY2026/27 and FY2027/28, against the 2.5 per cent the budget assumed, and the Commission cannot cost it.
Issue№ 24
The Fund and the Bills
Guyana's Mid-Year Report 2026 now expects the government to take 84 lifts of profit oil this year, against the 40 its budget assumed. Petroleum deposits into the Natural Resource Fund are projected at US$6,497.6 million, 136.8 per cent above the budget estimate. The withdrawal the budget may draw from the fund is unchanged at US$2,374.3 million. The windfall is being saved and the extra spending is being borrowed. Appendix E1 revises net domestic borrowing for 2026 from G$150,642.9 million to G$205,532.1 million, in a domestic debt stock that is 84.4 per cent Treasury bills.
Issue№ 23
The Breach and the Denominator
Jamaican consumer prices rose 7.9 per cent in the year to August, the third month running above the upper limit of the Bank of Jamaica's 4.0 to 6.0 per cent target. Almost none of it is demand. Transport is up 14.6 per cent on fares, tolls and petrol, food and non-alcoholic beverages 10.2 per cent on damaged crops, and core inflation sits inside the range at 5.2 per cent. The economy has contracted for three quarters. The same rising prices lift nominal GDP, and with it the denominator of a debt ratio the Fiscal Policy Paper expects to fall from 68.9 per cent to 65.7 per cent while the primary surplus drops to 0.5 per cent of GDP. One of those improvements is fiscal discipline. The other is arithmetic.
Issue№ 22
The Highest Tariff, the Smallest Line
The Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago published Working Paper WP03/2026 on 7 September. It puts the implied carbon border tariff facing Trinidad and Tobago at 40.8 per cent, the highest figure in its cross-country table. The same simulation moves the current account balance by US$3 million. Both are true, because the 40.8 per cent falls on refined petroleum products, a line worth US$139 million out of a US$13,314 million export book. The exposure that matters sits elsewhere, in a fertiliser and petrochemical complex the mechanism does not yet fully cover. The Bank's own March paper priced a domestic carbon tax at US$5.34 billion over ten years, against the US$189 million the European scheme would collect at its upper bound.
Issue№ 21
More Reserves, Thinner Cover
External reserves in The Bahamas stood at B$3,227.93 million in July, 8.6 per cent higher than a year earlier. Over the same year the broad money stock they back grew 9.8 per cent. Reserve cover of M2 slipped from 31.36 per cent to 31.03 per cent, even as cover of base money and of demand liabilities improved. The new money came from the state. Public sector borrowing accounts for about three-quarters of this year's domestic credit growth, against a net repayment over the same months of 2025. Domestic borrowing creates Bahamian dollars without creating the foreign currency standing behind them.
Issue№ 20
The Ratio and the Revenue
Guyana carries the lowest public debt ratio in the Caribbean, 28.6 per cent of GDP in 2025, and the Inter-American Development Bank calls it highly sustainable. The same report puts central government debt measured against revenue at 151 per cent in 2024 and a forecast 181.9 per cent in 2026. Both readings are correct. GDP is growing faster than the state can tax it, so the denominator that flatters Guyana is not the denominator that services the debt. A net oil exporter that still buys 90 per cent of its energy abroad is now holding down fuel and electricity prices, and the primary deficit is widening to pay for it.
Issue№ 19
The Buffer and the Dividend
Barbados' banks had their best year for asset quality in over a decade in 2025. The non-performing loan ratio fell to 3.6 per cent and credit grew 6.3 per cent, the fastest pace in more than ten years. In the same year the capital adequacy ratio fell from 21.2 per cent to 19.0 per cent. The Central Bank's own reading is that the fall in capital was a distribution rather than a deterioration in earnings. The buffer was paid out.
Issue№ 18
Ahead of Last Year, Behind the Plan
Jamaica collected J$264.77 billion in the first quarter of FY2026/27, up 14.0 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier. Against its own budget the same figure is J$28.72 billion short. A year ago that quarter landed within J$16.7 million of plan. The deficit stayed near its target only because spending came in J$19.49 billion light, and almost none of that restraint fell on the wage bill. Capital spending rose 55.8 per cent year on year and still finished 22.0 per cent below what the budget asked. Ahead of last year is not the same as on plan.
Issue№ 17
The Surplus and the Quarter
The Bahamas budgeted an overall fiscal surplus of B$75.5 million for the year to June 2026. Nine months in, the Ministry of Finance reported a deficit of B$157.3 million, wider than the year before. Reaching the target would have needed the closing quarter to raise 45.2 per cent more revenue than the same quarter of 2025, against nine month growth of 3.3 per cent. Arrivals over the calendar year to May rose 14.2 per cent, but the growth was in cruise passengers rather than stopover visitors. The volume arrived. The tax base did not.
Issue№ 16
More Visitors, Fewer Nights
Barbados grew 1.4 per cent in the first half of 2026, down from 2.0 per cent a year earlier. The balance sheet moved the other way. Debt fell to 93.7 per cent of GDP, the primary surplus came in well above its programme floor, and reserves rose. Long-stay arrivals edged higher while shorter average stays cut visitor nights. Consolidation is working. Consolidation is not growth.
Issue№ 15
The Cushion and the Push
The EC dollar turned fifty this month, still at EC$2.70 to the US dollar. The reserves behind it cover 97.6 per cent of the currency board's liabilities against a statutory floor of 60. There is now a proposal to spend 5 to 7 per cent of that cover on regional development. The arithmetic says the peg would survive it comfortably. The harder question is what the cushion was ever for.
Issue№ 14
The Storm That Never Lands
The July drought bulletin from the region's climate centre puts Barbados on drought watch and warns that a strong El Niño could carry rainfall deficits into the 2026 to 2027 dry season. Last week this column looked at insuring the sudden shock. Drought is the other kind of disaster. No landfall date, no parametric trigger, no payout. It arrives as a slow rise in the food bill and the water utility's costs. It is the fiscal risk a budget is least equipped to see coming.
Issue№ 13
The Cover and the Loss
The Fifty-First CARICOM summit closed in Gros Islet with the expected headlines on integration and reparations. Its most consequential economic decision attracted less attention: a Regional Insurance and Reinsurance Strategy, and a task force to build it, as un-insurance rises across the region and the storms intensify. Beryl cost Grenada more than a sixth of its economy in 2024. For the Caribbean, insurance is fiscal policy. The question is whether the strategy becomes a fund before the next storm, or stays a task force.
Issue№ 12
The Table and the Ledger
On Sunday 5 July the region's leaders gathered in Gros Islet for the 51st CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting. The communiqué will be written in the first person plural. The members signing it do not share a balance sheet: Barbados carries debt at 94.6 per cent of GDP, Trinidad public sector debt at 84.2 per cent, Jamaica near 68 per cent. Same table. Different arithmetic.
Issue№ 11
The Caribbean Minus One
At its 56th Annual Meeting the Caribbean Development Bank reported regional growth, excluding Guyana, of just 0.6 per cent in 2025. Put Guyana's oil back in and the same region grew 4.7 per cent. One country now sets the regional average by itself. The blended figure flatters a Caribbean that is mostly standing still, and lenders calibrate their support to it.
Issue№ 10
The Arrangement You Hope Not to Use
On 22 June 2026 the IMF Executive Board approved a 36-month precautionary Stand-By Arrangement for Barbados, SDR 189 million or about US$257 million, and the government has said it does not intend to draw a cent. A precautionary line is insurance bought from strength, not a lifeline. Set against Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa and Trinidad and Tobago, it shows what a decade of consolidation actually purchases.
Issue№ 09
The Food Bill and the Deal Book
On Tuesday 16 June 2026 the United Nations launched a Deal Book of US$320 million in investment-ready Caribbean food projects in Bridgetown. The region imports roughly 60 per cent of its food and CARICOM puts the annual bill above US$6 billion. The pipeline is small against the bill. The gap between them is a financing problem, and for Barbados a balance-of-payments one.
Issue№ 08
The Shock and the Strategy
The Caribbean Development Bank held its 56th Annual Meeting in Nassau from 1 to 5 June 2026. Two documents arrived in the same week. The new Strategic Plan 2026 to 2035 sets a ten-year direction. The Caribbean Economic Review and Outlook reports 2025 regional growth of 0.6 per cent excluding Guyana. The plan and the print belong on the same page.
Issue№ 07
The Third Arrangement
On 14 May 2026, the IMF announced a staff-level agreement on a 36-month precautionary Stand-By Arrangement for Barbados, providing access to SDR 189 million should it be needed. What a precautionary arrangement actually signals, and what it means for the rest of the Caribbean, is the more important story.
Issue№ 06
Surplus and Arrears, in the Same Year
Antigua and Barbuda ran a 2025 primary surplus near 5 per cent of GDP. The same staff report flagged significant arrears to Paris Club creditors and domestic suppliers. Both sentences are true. They describe the same fiscal year. The instrument that holds them together is the Citizenship-by-Investment programme, and the same instrument tells the opposite story in Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Issue№ 05
After the Storm, and Before One
Total investment in the Caribbean averaged 28 per cent of regional GDP in 2023, above both OECD and Latin American averages. The OECD and IDB say the figure is misleading. What is driving it, and what it is actually building, tells a different story.
Issue№ 04
The Floor Beneath the Figures
On 20 April 2026, 54,300 Barbadians received the first payment under the Cost of Living Cash Credit. The monthly BDS$100 transfer is the social dimension of BERT 2026. The quarterly review on 29 April will show the GDP line. The 54,300 payments processed show something the GDP line does not.
Issue№ 03
The Price of Discipline
Within six days, the Central Bank of Barbados made two announcements that say more about the economy than either one does on its own. Fiscal discipline without credit access is austerity by another name. With it, it is a strategy that can hold.
Issue№ 02
When Tourism Is the Weather
Fitch says Barbados' fiscal trajectory is improving. It also says the tourism base underneath is not. Cruise arrivals are up 9.6 per cent, stay-overs only 3.3. Volume has outpaced value. When Fitch flags tourism, it is flagging the ground everything else is standing on.
Issue№ 01
The Gap Between January and April
On 16 April 2026, ahead of the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters that "even our most hopeful scenario involves a growth downgrade." The next day, the Fund's World Economic Outlook confirmed the shape.