ST JOHN'S, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da: The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) has reini­ti­at­ed its mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Stand­by Arrange­ment (SBA) with An­tigua and Bar­bu­da af­ter sus­pend­ing it over con­cern about the use of the funds. In 2010, the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to a US$110.4 mil­lion stand­by arrange­ment with the Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

How­ev­er, the IMF sus­pend­ed the pro­gramme last Ju­ly im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing a move by the Bald­win Spencer ad­min­is­tra­tion to join with the East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank (EC­CB) in the takeover of the strug­gling An­tigua and Bar­bu­da In­vest­ment Bank (ABIB). How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to news re­ports com­ing car­ried in the An­tigua Ob­serv­er, the in­ter­ven­tion in­to the ABIB's af­fairs cre­at­ed a fis­cal con­tin­gency for the coun­try which was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear to the gov­ern­ment, the EC­CB or the IMF.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Harold Lovell was quot­ed as say­ing the gov­ern­ment had tak­en the view that giv­en the "sys­temic im­por­tance" of the ABI Bank not on­ly to the econ­o­my of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, but to the econ­o­my of the sub-re­gion, it was very im­por­tant we did every­thing pos­si­ble to pro­tect de­pos­i­tors and to en­sure the jobs at the bank were saved and to make cer­tain the cur­ren­cy union would not be af­fect­ed ad­verse­ly.

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