NEW COMPULSORY COLLECTIVE DEFINED CONTRIBUTION SCHEME.
ALL BARBADIANS 16 - 45 yrs. QUALIFY BUT MUST PAY CONTRIBUTIONS.

The Caribbean Daily Eye (CDEye) hosted its inaugural Virtual Roundtable Discussion on 29 September 2023, entitled ”Pension Reform, as it affects Barbados and wider CARICOM”.

The keynote speaker was Hal Austin from the UK, a retired senior financial journalist with the Times Newspaper Group, covering nearly 50 years in journalism, specializing in pensions and policy. The guest discussion panellists included Dr Dawn-Marie Armstrong, sport and exercise psychologist and founder of Afro Sports Psych, focusing of sports psychology,

Shaquani Hunte, a student currently at the Barbados Community College and a young entrepreneur, and who also sit on a number of youth committees. Other guest panellists were, Caswell Franklin, Barbadian Trade Unionist, who’s most satisfying job is representing people. Ken Smith, an industrialist in the food industry, who worked with some of the major players in food manufacturing in Barbados and in the UK. Kemar Stuart, Managing Director at Stuart and Perkins Caribbean, specialising in economic consultancy, focussing on macroeconomic issues. Kemar is also an author of Alternate Views and strong advocate for economic justice. The moderator for the discussion was Anderson Connell, editor and publisher of the CDEye.

As part of the introduction to the discussion, Anderson highlighted that pension reform is not just within the Caribbean, it has been taking place for many years across the world. He highlighted that, literally every government across the world has been crying out for pension reform within their specific jurisdictions. Examples where pension reforms were taking place included, Ghana, who in 2004, has had a pension reform where they raised the pension age to 60, and again, in 2022. They are now looking to raise the pension age to 65. France and the Dutch were also engaged in pension reform. Anderson further added that pension reform debates were taking place in the Caribbean. In the Bahamas, it has undergone pension reform. The British Virgin Islands is now talking about pension reform. St Vincent and Grenades are looking at pension reform. Grenada is very hot on pension reform, and likewise Barbados is now also very hot of pension reform.

Anderson highlighted that some individuals on the roundtable discussion are already retired and receiving their pensions because of paid contributions into the different pension schemes over the years. But moving forward, young people today may not  know what pension they will receive from the state or from private sector, if any, and hence pension reform is the key topic of today.

Hal Austin started his keynote speech, stating that the world is in a pension turmoil for the simple reason that, we are living longer and due mainly to changes in lifestyle and advances in medical science and so on. Along with that, of course, means that we are spending longer now in retirement

Hal highlighted the many issues with the current defacto pension system, the “pay as you go system”. He saw this as a Ponzi scheme, which is not workable, and must be got rid of. He indicated that there's no way of kicking the can down the road as far as this scheme is concerned, particularly if you depend on the working population to fund it through retirement incomes of retirees and so on, at some point it's going to explode. Hal when on to high the many reasons for pension reform today and provided an example of an ideal reform for Barbados and the wider CACRICOM.

Hal said that we all require some form of income when you reach retirement age, whether it be 60, 65 or 68. The answer, and it's the answer that in the Caribbean we are ignoring. It is that the state, no matter what kind of state we have, whether it is a robust capitalist state, a social state, whatever, the state, it cannot continue to fund state retirement pensions. And that's the fact that must be deal with. The reality is, we must create a system in which people can fund their own retirements. A person’s  retirement will vary depending on the kind of lifestyle required. At retirement, people might want to maintain the lifestyles that they had during their working lives. Some people may want to cut down, it depends.

Hal in his presentation, is advocating for Barbados and the wider CARICOM to implement a new “Compulsory Collective Defined Contribution Pension Scheme”. All Barbadians 16 - 45 yrs. will qualify but must pay contributions.

Hal’s keynote speech paper can be access here: https://1drv.ms/b/s!ArkJK2bh4p_qhYoYkt3hOTjkNPiB5w?e=5mNp0n