KINGSTON, Ja­maica-A del­e­ga­tion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) has end­ed a two week vis­it here hold­ing dis­cus­sions with gov­ern­ment over an eco­nom­ic pro­gramme that could be sup­port­ed un­der an IMF fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dr Pe­ter Phillip told a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day that while sig­nif­i­cant progress had been made, the Por­tia Simp­son-Miller ad­min­is­tra­tion did not reach an agree­ment with the Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion for an agree­ment for sub­mis­sion to the IMF board by this end of this year. Phillips said the IMF mis­sion has broad­ly ac­cept­ed the medi­um term pro­gramme which will un­der­pin any deal and re­mains hope­ful that an agree­ment could still be reached by year end.

"Well, it is still pos­si­ble, will it hap­pen? That de­pends on us re­solv­ing the is­sues which re­main. Re­mem­ber, we are ef­fec­tive­ly now in No­vem­ber in the sense that there are dis­cus­sions to take place in the next week, we'll be in the mid­dle of Oc­to­ber," he said.

The for­mer gov­ern­ment re­sumed a bor­row­ing re­la­tion­ship with the IMF in 2010 but was un­able to meet sev­er­al of the tar­gets un­der the Stand-by Agree­ment (SBA) and in Ju­ly this year, Phillips in­di­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to rene­go­ti­ate the US$1.47 bil­lion agree­ment with the IMF which ex­pired in May.

In a state­ment, Jan Kees Mar­ti­jn, the IMF mis­sion chief for Ja­maica, said that "Ja­maica has long­stand­ing struc­tur­al weak­ness­es" and a key chal­lenge is how to at­tain high­er and sus­tain­able rates of eco­nom­ic growth, while re­duc­ing macro­eco­nom­ic risks, in­clud­ing from the high pub­lic debt and high un­em­ploy­ment.

He said au­thor­i­ties and the IMF mis­sion had agreed on the need for a medi­um-term eco­nom­ic pro­gramme that pro­motes a growth-ori­ent­ed en­vi­ron­ment, aimed at im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness while rais­ing ef­fi­cien­cy.

CANA