An Overview Of Barbados Offshore Centre

Barbados is a small island of 166 square miles located approximately 1600 miles southeast of Miami in the south-eastern Caribbean with a population of approximately 260,000 people. A former colony of the United Kingdom, it gained its independence in 1966. As a colony, its main source of revenue was sugar, but as its natural climate made it an attractive vacation destination, revenue from tourism gradually came to rival revenue from agro-industries as the principal contributor to the economy, as the availability and the affordability of international transportation made the island more widely accessible.

Over the past two decades, as Barbados has faced increasing competition from other tourist destinations leading to a decline in revenue from this source and the contribution of the once King Sugar to the economy has dramatically declined, successive Administrations have realised the importance of diversifying the base of the country's economy.