What is the population and investor base of Barbados? What does the exchange do to educate investors?
The population has been stable at approximately 270,000 to 280,000 people with a workforce of about 109,000 people. The countrys size is 166 square miles so it has relatively dense population. Like many of the developed countries, our population tend to be an aging one. The active investor base is about 30,000 people. A few years ago, we had one of our major financial institutions, an insurance company, demutualizing. This created a whole group of investors in our marketplace. There are still a lot of people who are not part of the investing culture. In our market, many people tend to put their money in savings accounts in the commercial bank and real estate. What we at the stock exchange are trying to do is to create a class of equity investors and we are doing that through education. We are going out there and continually educating people about the stock exchange, about investing as a whole. To assist in this goal we hold panel discussions at least once quarterly as well as creating
