Country-wide policy
Barbados Still Has Exchange Control
The Exchange Control Act, Chapter 71, is in force, and it works the way exchange control always has: a general prohibition, with permission from the Authority as the exception. Only an authorised dealer may buy, borrow, sell or lend foreign currency. Payments to or for the credit of a person resident outside Barbados need permission. Securities denominated in Barbados dollars cannot be transferred between a resident and a non-resident without the Central Bank's permission. The Authority is the Minister of Finance, who has delegated most of the work to the Central Bank, which in turn delegates to authorised dealers and depositaries. For a person moving to Barbados the practical consequence is that "resident" means something different here than it does for tax: three years of continuous residence, and never if you are on a work permit.
Topics it changes
- Opening a bank account
- Residency through investment
- Residency on passive income
- When you become a tax resident
What it requires
- Deal in foreign currency only through an authorised dealer
- Expect a Barbados dollar account to be an External Account until three years of continuous residence have passed, and indefinitely if you are on a work permit
- Seek the Central Bank's permission for a foreign currency account held with a bank abroad, and expect the dealer to justify why it is necessary
At a glance
- Exchange control authority
- The Minister of Finance, delegating to the Central Bank of Barbados
- Residence test for exchange control
- Continuous residence in Barbados for at least three years, and not on a work permit
- Travelling allowance
- BDS$20,000 a year, of which up to the equivalent of BDS$2,500 may be taken as foreign currency notes and coins
Stated by the Central Bank in its exchange control FAQs; we did not find the instrument or circular setting the figures.
- Barbados dollar securities
- Transfer between a resident and a non-resident requires the Central Bank's permission
Two meanings of resident, in the same country, at the same time
A person who spends more than 182 days in Barbados in a calendar year is tax-resident. The same person is a non-resident for exchange control until they have lived here continuously for three years, and remains one however long they stay if they hold a work permit. Those two tests sit in different statutes administered by different bodies and neither cross-refers to the other. A professional moving to Barbados on a three-year work permit is therefore liable to Barbadian income tax from the first year and banking as a non-resident throughout - which is not a contradiction, but it is a surprise if nobody says it.
What the regime is for
The Central Bank explains exchange control as a set of procedures assisting the Government in directing flows in the best interest of the balance of payments. The Barbados dollar is pegged, and the controls are what defends the peg. Liberalisation has happened and continues to happen, but by Central Bank circular and general permission rather than by repealing the Act, so the structure stays: prohibition first, permission second, and the permission can be withdrawn.
What the law says
«Except with the permission of the Authority, no person resident in Barbados, other than an authorised dealer, shall, in the Island, do any act which involves, is in association with or is preparatory to buying or borrowing any gold or foreign currency from, or selling or lending any gold or foreign currency to, any person outside the Island.»The width of "any act which involves, is in association with or is preparatory to" is what makes this a regime rather than a rule about transactions.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The statute library of the Barbadian judiciary, publishing the Chapters of the Laws of Barbados and the subsidiary legislation as PDFs printed by the Government Printer. It is the only place the consolidated Chapters are published as a browsable set, and it carries the Constitution, the Immigration Act Chapter 190, the Income Tax Act Chapter 73, the Customs Act Chapter 66, the Exchange Control Act Chapter 71 and the Caribbean Community Acts.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It consolidates and does not issue, and its editions are old and dated per page rather than per Act: the Immigration Act and the Income Tax Act print Law Revision Order years of 2007 on their newest pages and 1997 or 2002 on others, and no page says what the Act looks like today. It must not be cited for anything amended after about 2008 without checking the amending Act - section 17(1) of the Immigration Act was substituted in 2020 and this edition does not show it. Several of its files are scans with no text layer: the Barbados Citizenship Act Chapter 186 is unreadable and the Road Traffic Act Chapter 295 is largely so, and neither may be quoted from this publisher. Extraction of the Immigration Act PDF silently loses four pairs of pages, so an absence in it is not evidence of absence in the Act. It must also not be relied on for completeness, and the gap is the publisher's rather than ours: its Immigration Act lists sections 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 30 and 31 in its own arrangement of sections and prints none of them. Two independent extractions of the file agree, every page but the last carries a text layer, and the headings Charging of member of crew, Persons unlawfully entering, Applications for work permits and Deportation orders each appear exactly once, in the contents. A negative claim read off this Chapter - that the Act says nothing about something - can be neither trusted nor disproved from it.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«Nationals of other countries who have continuously resided in Barbados for at least three years and who are not on work permit;»One limb of the Central Bank's list of who counts as a resident. It is published guidance rather than a definition in the Act, and the Act itself does not define residence for this purpose in the text we read.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The delegate of the Minister of Finance under the Exchange Control Act, and the body that in turn delegates to authorised dealers and depositaries. Its exchange control pages carry the operative definitions a newcomer needs: who counts as resident and non-resident for exchange control, what an External Account is, what a Foreign Currency Account is, and what general permissions have been granted to the banks.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It administers and does not issue. Its definitions of resident and non-resident are published guidance, not statutory definitions, and they are not the Income Tax Act's definitions - the same person can be resident for tax and non-resident for exchange control for three years. The detail lives in Central Bank circulars that the FAQ pages reference but do not reproduce, so the FAQs must not be cited as the complete position. Figures for travelling allowances appear without an instrument behind them.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«The EXCHANGE CONTROL AUTHORITY in Barbados is the Minister of Finance.»About this source
The delegate of the Minister of Finance under the Exchange Control Act, and the body that in turn delegates to authorised dealers and depositaries. Its exchange control pages carry the operative definitions a newcomer needs: who counts as resident and non-resident for exchange control, what an External Account is, what a Foreign Currency Account is, and what general permissions have been granted to the banks.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It administers and does not issue. Its definitions of resident and non-resident are published guidance, not statutory definitions, and they are not the Income Tax Act's definitions - the same person can be resident for tax and non-resident for exchange control for three years. The detail lives in Central Bank circulars that the FAQ pages reference but do not reproduce, so the FAQs must not be cited as the complete position. Figures for travelling allowances appear without an instrument behind them.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The Central Bank's FAQ page refers to its own circulars for the detail of foreign currency accounts. Those circulars were not read for this record and are where the current permissions actually live.
The Act as published carries no revision date. Its own text reflects the 1974 amendment abolishing the sterling area distinction, which the Central Bank describes.
Nothing in this policy restricts opening a bank account. It governs what may be done with the money in it.