Government has welcomed the reopening of Massy Stores Oistins. This was made clear today by Minister of Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Commerce, Dwight Sutherland, following a walk through of the refurbished facilities at Southern Plaza, Christ Church, accompanied by Managing Director of Massy Stores (Barbados) Ltd., Randall Banfield.

Expressing pleasure that the organization fit within the country’s mandate, he said: “As a Government, we sought to create a new economy that necessitates building new planks of economic growth and modernizing old ones with a view that we remain relevant in a global and open, competitive economy. And this is just an example of what we as a Government would love to see.” Elaborating further, he said, “Re-opening this store has paved the way for small businesses indeed to ply their trade and to bring their products, whether it is bananas, cakes, fruit juices, pork…”

While acknowledging that this was in keeping with Government’s goals, Mr. Sutherland explained: “We are seeking to become fossil fuel free by 2030, a country and a government’s mandate and indeed when you look around we often speak about photovoltaic and wind energy, energy from the sun. But critical to energy savings and critical to removing that dependence on diesel and fossil fuel is the whole aspect of energy efficiency drive.”

And, we as a Government recognize that we can save one-third of our energy cost when we invest in renewable energy in terms of energy efficiency systems. And, I want to congratulate Massy for indeed leading the charge in not only reopening a store, but reopening a store with the Government’s mission and mandate of ensuring that we indeed have an energy efficient system and an energy efficiency drive.”

Praising the company’s support for them, he said their continued assistance could only help to “build out the small businesses and entrepreneurial ecosystems“, providing them with an outlet for their products.

“We closed at the end of May and we opened back here around the middle of September. So, for 14 weeks, we’ve done a lot of things… I’m sure you would be very pleased with the difference. Our consumers are very happy. You can see there is a lot of traffic in the store; we have had good support and very positive comments and overall, we are really very happy to be back in the Oistins’ community and to be here playing our part.”