How did the global crisis affect the Jamaican economy?
The crisis had a tremendous effect in our mining sector which provides about 40% of the government revenue. It destroyed our fiscal balance at a time when everything else was also down. However, we have been able to find our way out of it and we obtained a loan of 1.3 billion US$ from the IMF which allowed us to compensate in the short term the fall out of the revenue. Jamaica stands at a historic turning point led by Prime Minister Bruce Golding who, hand in hand with the private sector and civil society, is fully engaged in building social capital and restoring confidence in the future of Jamaica. What are the main challenges/priorities Jamaica has to deal with? The main challenges we have are to ensure our rate of growth remains stable so that by 2015 or 2020 we are at a sustainable level of development. What have been happening is that we had high interest rates so that investment was low and production was negative. What we want is to grow so that our people can have confidence. U
