Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller said the Caribbean island would benefit from a Greek-style bailout as it negotiates a new loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund. "If they could give a bailout like Greece, lord have mercy, you would see Jamaica grow and flourish," Simpson Miller, 66, said in an interview yesterday in Montego Bay. "The European countries got together and tried to do something so that they can give some serious aid to Greece. We know we would never be able to get the same level as Greece, but if we could get some consideration from countries or the IMF, we would be on our way."
An IMF accord that included a US$1.27 billion loan fell apart after the previous administration failed to share information with the Washington-based lender for almost a year, Simpson Miller said. The loan had been linked to the successful swap of US$7.8 billion of local bonds in 2010 for securities with longer maturities and lower interest rates. Jamaica's debt burden was 126 per cent of GDP in 2011, according to the IMF. The IMF accord had paved the way for Moody's Investors Service to raise Jamaica's credit rating and the IMF, which devised the debt exchange, to approve a 27-month, US$1.27 billion stand-by credit. The governing People's National Party has since agreed to boost taxes and limit pensions as part of reaching a new IMF accord. Jamaica will not tax the most vulnerable, said Simpson Miller, who is island's third prime minister since October and previously served in the post in 2006-2007.
Economic growth will rise to 2.4 per cent this year from 1.4 per cent in 2011, according to the IMF. An official with the opposition Jamaica Labour Party called Simpson Miller's statements inaccurate. "There was no failure to share information with the IMF for one year," Audley Shaw, a spokesman for the party on economic and finance issues, said in a statement. "The lack of several IMF reviews under the Stand-By Agreement was as a result of slower than expected pace of implementation of critical structural reforms to tax, pension and public sector wage settlements." Jamaica's debt burden in 2011 ranked it the eighth most-indebted country in the world, behind only Antigua & Barbuda and St Kitts & Nevis in the Caribbean. Zimbabwe led the list at 231 per cent of GDP, with Greece fourth at 165 per cent.
