Category: Top stories: Local

The Government has tacked on just over $6 billion to its spending plans for the fiscal year despite repeated pronouncements from Prime Minister Bruce Golding that a major shortfall in revenue would lead to a sharp cut in the Budget.

Several questions are now being asked about how the Government will finance the $561-billion revised Budget tabled in Parliament yesterday.

Finance Minister Audley Shaw and Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller are certainly at odds over the state of Jamaica’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but, in a rare moment of convergence of views, they have found common ground on the need for commercial banks to cut lending rates.

Effective Thursday, 17 September, 2009 the rates offered on Certificates of Deposit issued by Bank of Jamaica will be reduced by 100 basis points. The six-month benchmark rate will therefore move from 18 per cent per annum to 17 per cent.

The opinion of most market players globally is that the global economy seems to be showing signs of stabilisation and recovery, as coined in the term “green shoots”.

The Latin America and the Caribbean economy grew an average 4.1 per cent from 1950-2008, while its average annual inflation rate from 1970-2008 reached 15.4 per cent.

Last Friday, the Bank of Jamaica held an important seminar, in conjunction with the DeLisle Worrell-led Caribbean Centre for Money and Finance, on “Strategies to cope with Global Uncertainty – Choices for Caribbean Business and Finance”.

One might think that the trend in devaluation of the Jamaican dollar over the past two decades has been consistent. However, a closer look reveals a less uniform movement with periodic spurts.

Jamaica’s ranking dropped eight places to 75 out of 183 countries in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2010 report – a report measuring the ease of doing business.

Government has made widening the tax net the primary short-term focus in its pursuit of new revenue streams, minister of finance and public service Audley Shaw told Caribbean Business Report yesterday.

Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) Governor Derick Latibeaudiere, on Wednesday said that under an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme Jamaica would likely see economic growth as early as next fiscal year, while asserting that structural adjustments needed to reduce the shortfall in resources that Government now faces would lead to harsher economic conditions for Jamaicans.