At the onset of the global financial crisis, the US T-bill rate declined rapidly reaching near-zero. The Barbados T-bill rate declined less dramatically, and the spread between the two rates as at December 2009 widened beyond the two-percentage points average registered during the 2000 to 2007 period (Figure 8).
In line with the general reduction in domestic benchmark interest rates, the prime lending rate, and the average savings rate also trended downward during 2009 (Figure 9).