Jamaica: Searching for economic stabilization

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – At the beginning of this month, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved new funding arrangements to help stabilize the Jamaican economy and put it on a path to economic growth. The negotiation of the funds, a so-called Extended Fund Facility (EFF) up to US$923M has taken an extended period, lasting from the period of the recent Jamaica Labour Party governments of Bruce Golding and Andrew Holness, to that of the People’s National Party government of present Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller. In commenting on the grant of the funds, a high official of the IMF’s Executive Board reminded all who still needed to know that, “for the past three decades, Jamaica has suffered from very low growth, high public debt and serious social challenges,” the result of an “unsustainable debt burden, low competitiveness, a weak business climate, and lack of policy credibility.” The interpretation of this stagnation of the economy has plagued the country since the last half of the decade of the 1970s under Michael Manley ‒ exempting a brief period of growth in the initial reign of Edward Seaga when the country benefited from the United States’ creation of the Caribbean Basin Initiative ‒ through the regime of PJ Patterson who was Prime Minister for fourteen years, then onto the brief recent Golding-Holness eras, and down to the present.