Barbados 1999

In 1999, the population of Barbados was estimated to be around 275,821 people. The economy of Barbados was largely based on tourism and international finance services. Its foreign relations were mainly with other Caribbean countries, as well as the United States and Canada. Politically, Barbados in 1999 was a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy. The Governor-General represented Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. The Prime Minister was Owen Arthur and his Barbados Labour Party held a majority in Parliament. See ethnicityology for Barbados in the year of 2018.

Yearbook 1999

Barbados 1999

Barbados. Visit Countryaah official website to get information about the capital city of Barbados. The Barbados Labor Party, BLP, won a landslide victory in the January 20 parliamentary elections and received 65.4% of the electorate’s votes. The BLP thus won 26 of the 28 seats in Parliament, The House of Assembly, while the opposition party, the Democratic Labor Party, only managed to secure the two remaining seats. The ruling party is believed to have won voters’ confidence in their economic policies, which have led to five years of uninterrupted economic growth in Barbados.

  • Also see Abbreviationfinder.org to see the acronym of BRB which stands for Barbados and other definitions of this 3-letter abbreviation.

Map of Barbados Bridgetown in English

BARBADOS

In the interval between the last two censuses (1970 and 1980) the residents of Barbados went from 238,141 to 249,000; by 1988, according to one estimate, they had risen to 254,000. The annual increase, due to the persistence of emigration, was very modest (not exceeding 0.5%), and the small state, demographically very congested (the density reaches almost 590 residents per km 2), did not it seems destined to become further overloaded with population. The capital, Bridgetown, is still a small town of just 10,000.

Barbado remains largely an agricultural country, especially sugar. However, the agricultural population, during the 1980s, fell to less than 20% of the total active population, and sugar production fell sharply in the twenty-year period 1965-85. On the other hand, oil extraction has increased and new industrial activities have been introduced and are developing (from clothing to electronic components) which now contribute to a large extent to exports. As in almost all Caribbean countries, tourism has had a notable boost, with a significant increase in the number of arrivals (420,000 in 1987), mostly fueled by the United States, which is also by far the main commercial interlocutor (absorbing 2/3 of exports). Overall, Barbados is a country in transformation, per capita in significant rise (according to estimates by the World Bank, 5590 dollars in 1988), but with a highly passive balance of payments and a worrying rate of inflation.

History. – Since the 1950s, Barbados’s political system has been based on the alternation between the Barbados Labor Party (BLP), which held a majority from 1951 to 1961, and the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), born from a split to the left of the former, which led the country to independence (1966), thus remaining hegemon until 1976. Back in government, the BLP was unable to cope with the serious economic difficulties caused by the international crisis of the early 1980s, while its rigid alignment with the United States in foreign policy caused a deterioration in relations with Trinidad and Tobago (main partner regional economic activity of Barbados), opposed to the invasion of Grenada in 1983. After the landslide victory obtained in the elections of May 1986, the DLP started a policy of relaunching economic activity and employment, assuming a more autonomous attitude in against the United States. In 1989, a split in the DLP, caused by serious disagreements in economic policy, gave birth to a third party, the New Democratic Party (NDP); however, the DLP maintained a strong parliamentary majority (18 out of 28 deputies) in the subsequent elections of January 1991.

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