Following years of Jamaica being riddled by ineffective debt management, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has declared that under his Administration, the country will never go back to an “addiction” to borrowing money.
“Right now we have put in place very strong institutions to make sure that Jamaica does not go back to this addiction to borrowing,” Holness told a diaspora town hall meeting in Ottawa, Canada on Thursday night.
He said approximately 10 years ago, the island’s “debt-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product)” was 150 per cent, and the country was paying as high as 70 per cent of every dollar for debt servicing.
“… But once we decided as a country – JLP (Jamaica Labour Party) and PNP (People’s National Party), independent, church people, civil society, that it (debt management) is an important thing to do, we started to come to grips with this, so now our debt is going to be about 74 per cent of GDP at the end of this financial year,” he stated.
Holness said there was also a time when the country’s reserves were “less than a billion dollars” and the ability to import seemed to have been at risk.
Currently, the prime minister said the nation’s reserves are “the highest they have ever been”, which he said is almost US$4.5 billion.
To that end, he said the Government will continue to focus on sound economic and fiscal management, with fiscal discipline as a key ingredient.
Meanwhile, Holness said the brand of Jamaica is in the process of expanding and transforming into an area it is not usually known for, which is fiscal management of the economy, economic growth policies and full employment, among others.
“When you hear of Jamaica, you are going to hear of a country that has come through very difficult economic struggles, but is recovering well and innovating, a country that is increasing its productivity, increasing its efficiency, and (is) seriously on its way of becoming an economic powerhouse in the region,” he stated.