标签： Barbados

Despite boasting a robust pipeline of infrastructure proposals and ample access to global capital, the Caribbean region continues to struggle to translate development ideas into investment-ready, financially viable projects capable of enduring economic volatility, political shifts, and multi-decade operational timelines. That key finding took center stage during a dedicated session at the 2024 Caribbean Infrastructure Forum (CARIF), titled “The Mechanics of Bankable Projects: How To Best Use the Tools Available”, which brought together top leaders from regional banking, development finance, and global advisory to outline pathways for attracting larger volumes of private capital to the region’s critical infrastructure sector.

Speaking at the panel, Kemar Polius, Senior Director and Head of Corporate Banking and Sustainable Finance at CIBC Caribbean, framed project bankability as fundamentally rooted in investor confidence. “Capital follows confidence: confidence in project sponsors, confidence in long-term cash flows, confidence in regulatory frameworks, and confidence in contractual agreements,” Polius explained. With a presence across 10 Caribbean markets and a track record of leading or arranging more than $1.5 billion in infrastructure deals over the past 10 years — supporting high-priority assets including ports, airports, and hospitals — Polius noted that most project failures occur long before financing proposals reach commercial lenders.

“Where we see projects stall or collapse is long before they come to us for a term sheet or final financing approval. The bottleneck is almost always on the project preparation side,” he said, pointing to common gaps including incomplete feasibility studies, unresolved regulatory permitting, and fragmented or inconsistent regulatory frameworks that erode investor trust. “We are not short of project ideas, and we are certainly not short of available capital, as the strong attendance here at CARIF proves. The missing piece is consistent, high-quality project preparation.”

The session, moderated by Victoria Miles, Founding Partner of ImpactA Global, assembled a cross-sector panel of experts including Polius, Roger Kirton (Director of Deal Advisory at KPMG Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean), Naweed Nuhuman (Director of Deal Advisory for KPMG CARICOM), and Pablo Pereira dos Santos (Principal for Public-Private Partnerships at the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB). Panelists explored a range of mechanisms available to governments seeking to mobilize private investment, including public-private partnerships (PPPs), blended finance structures, risk guarantees, and strategic risk allocation. Across all discussions, however, participants consistently circled back to the non-negotiable importance of early-stage preparation, predictable revenue streams, credible regulatory and contractual frameworks, and assigning risk to the stakeholder best positioned to manage it effectively.

Polius also warned against the common pitfall of aligning long-lived infrastructure projects with short political election cycles. “Many projects stall out because they are designed to fit the term of a single administration, but infrastructure assets by their nature operate across decades,” he said. “The contractual frameworks that underpin these projects absolutely must stand the test of time and survive political transitions.” He cited the $300 million Prince George Wharf redevelopment project in The Bahamas as a successful model: the project maintained consistent momentum across multiple changes in government and continued construction through the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought unprecedented disruption to the Caribbean’s core tourism sector. At the project’s opening ceremony, three consecutive Bahamian prime ministers were in attendance, a visible demonstration of the cross-administration continuity that builds long-term investor confidence.

Pereira dos Santos echoed this assessment, noting that political and institutional continuity is particularly critical given the extended timelines of major infrastructure development. A complex project can require three to six years of preparation before it even reaches the market for financing, he explained, and the resulting operating concession can extend for 30 years or more. “When you sign the final agreement, the project isn’t over — it’s just getting started,” he said.

The discussion also covered the rising use of blended finance, and the role that multilateral development institutions play in helping projects reach financial close. Polius described concessional financing and partnerships with multilaterals as valuable “accelerators” that can support early-stage project preparation, strengthen government institutional capacity, and provide guarantees and other risk-mitigation tools that make projects attractive to commercial investors. However, he emphasized that development finance should complement, rather than replace, private commercial capital, outlining three core principles to guide this collaboration: additionality (confirming concessional support is necessary for the project to move forward), targeting (ensuring the intervention addresses a specific identified risk), and proportionality (matching the level of support to the actual need).

Pereira dos Santos reinforced this view, noting that blended finance delivers the greatest value when it is used to address residual risks after a project has already been fully prepared and structured. “Finance cannot fix all the foundational flaws an underprepared project has. Trying to do that is a guaranteed recipe for failure,” he said.

Limited project scale remains an additional persistent challenge for the Caribbean, where many high-priority projects in emerging sectors like renewable energy are relatively small by global investment standards. Panelists identified project aggregation and the development of repeatable, predictable project pipelines as key strategies to address this barrier, allowing investors to aggregate smaller assets into larger, more attractive investment bundles. Kirton emphasized that regional governments need to move beyond publishing generic lists of infrastructure ambitions to give investors the clarity they require. “Investors don’t just want to see a laundry list of desired projects. They need prioritized proposals, completed preparation, clear procurement processes, stable regulatory frameworks, and a visible pipeline that lets them plan long-term capital deployment,” he explained.

The session also highlighted a growing shift in investment interest beyond traditional Caribbean infrastructure assets such as airports, seaports, and tourism-related developments. Panelists noted that renewable energy, water infrastructure, climate-resilient construction, and digital infrastructure are all attracting rising attention from global investors.

For the Caribbean, unlocking this wave of new capital will depend less on proving that infrastructure is needed — a case that is already widely accepted — and more on consistently delivering well-prepared projects that investors can confidently back over the long term. As Polius summed up, the core requirements for success are straightforward but non-negotiable: credible project sponsors, predictable long-term cash flows, durable contractual agreements, and regulatory environments built to last.

Three years after CoopEnergy signed landmark agreements with the Government of Barbados to privatize the country’s centuries-old struggling sugar industry, the cooperative has confirmed the entire project is now effectively dead, following the collapse of dispute mediation talks. The breakdown of talks has left the future of the 4,500-acre sugar operation and its workforce uncertain, with the government yet to announce its alternative plans for the loss-making sector.\n\nIn statements delivered to local media outlet Barbados TODAY over the weekend, Lt Col Trevor Browne, chairman of the Barbados Sustainable Energy Cooperative Society (CoopEnergy), revealed that the government has fully abandoned the December 2023 agreements that were meant to transfer management of the state-owned Barbados Agricultural Management Company (BAMC) to the cooperative. Under the original deal, two new private entities were established: Barbados Energy and Sugar Company (BESCO) Ltd. to run the sector’s sugar factory, and Agricultural Business Company (ABC) Ltd. to oversee the 4,500 hectares of agricultural sugar land.\n\nBrowne explained that the transformative sugar sector project, which CoopEnergy had spent years advancing and remained enthusiastic about, never even launched. “We were never provided the core administrative paperwork or operational documentation required to actually begin work,” he told reporters. “Based on the government’s current stance, this initiative will not be moving forward with our cooperative at the helm.”\n\nWhen asked whether CoopEnergy would retain any stake or role in Barbados’ sugar industry moving forward, Browne confirmed that based on current signals from the administration, the cooperative will exit the sector entirely. “The mediation process was intended as a space to renegotiate terms and resolve our disagreements, but no productive progress came out of those talks,” he said. “It is clear the government intends to proceed with its own plans for the sugar sector, and those plans do not include us.” Browne did add, however, that CoopEnergy would still be open to re-engaging on the project if the government reverses course. The cooperative chairman has long framed its community-focused management model for the sugar sector as a revolutionary approach that could turn around decades of underperformance.\n\nOn the impact of the collapse for sugar sector workers, Browne noted that the government has shared no details of its alternative plans with either CoopEnergy or the workforce. “Government abandoned the original agreement they negotiated with us, and they have stopped all communication on what comes next. We don’t know their new plans, and I don’t believe workers have been informed either,” he said.\n\nThe collapse was formally announced in a late Friday press release from CoopEnergy, which expressed profound disappointment over the government and BAMC’s unilateral withdrawal from the binding divestment contracts. The agreements were structured to transfer BAMC’s operations into a joint private ownership model held by CoopEnergy and BAMC’s sugar workers.\n\nThe original divestment push came as a requirement of Barbados’ International Monetary Fund loan program, after decades of poor performance at BAMC that has cost Barbados taxpayers roughly $20 million in annual subsidies to keep the sugar sector afloat. CoopEnergy’s release outlined that the project began with broad institutional backing: working alongside BAMC leadership, the cooperative developed a full divestment plan that won endorsement from the government, starting with an initial memorandum of understanding (MOU). CoopEnergy then spent months mobilizing support for the initiative, hosting detailed briefing sessions for local credit unions, cooperative leadership and financial regulators, and securing access to substantial international funding earmarked for sustainable cooperative development.\n\nBy December 18, 2023, all final shareholder and subscription agreements to establish BESCO and ABC had been approved by Barbados’ Cabinet and officially signed, coinciding with final approval of the IMF loan. But in the months following the signing, CoopEnergy received no substantive responses from BAMC on its repeated requests for operational information. The only official engagement was a brief meeting with then Agriculture Minister Indar Weir in September 2024, weeks after the cooperative’s board sent a formal formal inquiry to the minister.\n\nCoopEnergy’s statement alleges that BAMC and government officials began making public and private demands that CoopEnergy inject upfront capital into the project, while refusing to provide the audited financial records and cleaned asset registry that both the MOU and final agreements required the state side to share. BAMC even approached other cooperative groups to solicit alternative funding, but those entities also declined to commit without access to the required financial documentation.\n\nIt was not until August 18, 2025, that CoopEnergy received its first formal notification from BAMC: the state entity had unilaterally decided to invalidate the shareholder agreements for both new companies with immediate effect. CoopEnergy challenged the move, noting that the signed contracts did not allow for unilateral cancellation and required any disputes to go through a formal mediation process. BAMC agreed to enter mediation, which ran from March 2026 through August 2026, before concluding without any resolution or path forward for continued negotiations.\n\nWhen contacted for comment on the collapse, current Minister of Agriculture Dr Shantal Munro-Knight said she would need to receive a full briefing on the matter before making any public statement. The Barbados Workers Union (BWU), which represents sugar sector workers, also issued a statement Saturday noting that the union was not a signatory to the original contracts between the government, BAMC and CoopEnergy, and would not comment on the terms of the agreement. “The BWU will continue to stand guard over the interests of the workers, and to ensure that any transition, divestment or restructuring in the sugar industry honours the commitments made to them and keeps their welfare at the centre,” the union said.