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New initiative to attract foreign visitors to country

Published:Friday | July 3, 2020 | 12:24 AM
Mottley
Mottley

BRIDGETOWN (CMC):

THE BARBADOS government says it is considering introducing the 12-month Barbados Welcome Stamp to allow visitors the option to work remotely from the island for a year at a time.

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said that the stamp concept, now being refined for promotion, would allow “persons to come and work from here overseas, digitally, so that persons don’t need to remain in the countries in which they are”.

She said one of the things the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has shown is that it made short-term travel more difficult because of the testing and the requirements for rapid testing, which were not reliably available.

“You don’t need to work in Europe, or the US or Latin America if you can come here and work for a couple months at a time; go back and come back. But in order for those things to truly resonate, what does it mean? It means that what we offer has to be world-class, and what we continue to offer is world-class,” Mottley said.

“The government is committed to working with you on the promotion of new concepts like the 12-month Barbados Welcome Stamp, being able to open our borders to persons travelling and making it as hospitable as ever for all of us, and making it available for Barbadians from every walk of life to believe that for special occasions ... they can come out and be a part of this wonderful exercise.”

Mottley said that in building an inclusive society, there has to be something in it for everyone, and the work done by her administration was not only limited to the restaurant sector alone, but involved working with communities to be able to get the best out of them.