To achieve such remarkable success, these countries reformed their tax and benefit systems by reducing for example tax wedges on labour income and by carrying out a stricter enforcement of job search rules and a better surveillance of eligibility. They also increased, when and where needed, the flexibility of their labour market.
Our mandate is economic and financial policy, but we do not conduct those policies in a vacuum; we are to advise on policies for the betterment of the Barbadian society, and all its members. As I have been at pains to emphasize on more than one occasion, the outcome of any policy action depends on the individual responses of every producer and every consumer.