WASH­ING­TON DC–The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) says An­tigua and Bar­bu­da has made "ex­cel­lent progress" to­wards achiev­ing its goal of restor­ing debt sus­tain­abil­i­ty and macro­eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.An IMF mis­sion head­ed by Ge­of­frey Ban­nis­ter re­cent­ly com­plet­ed a re­view of the 2010 mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Stand-By Arrange­ment (SBA) to the is­land.

"On the fis­cal side, the fis­cal out­turn for March 2013 was well above pro­gramme tar­gets, sur­pass­ing the per­for­mance cri­te­ri­on on the over­all fis­cal bal­ance and the in­dica­tive tar­get for the pri­ma­ry bal­ance by a wide mar­gin."This was part­ly as a re­sult of strong rev­enue per­for­mance in the first quar­ter, in line with pro­gramme tar­gets due to a large one-off re­duc­tion of tax ar­rears and part­ly to con­tin­ued ex­pen­di­ture re­straint," Ban­nis­ter said.

He said the first quar­ter re­sults put the econ­o­my "on a good foot­ing" to achieve the an­nu­al fis­cal tar­gets for 2013: a cen­tral gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry sur­plus of 3 per cent of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) and an over­all sur­plus of 0.3 per cent of GDP.

"No­table progress has al­so been made on struc­tur­al re­forms, with five im­por­tant bench­marks com­plet­ed in March-April," he said, not­ing that a new Cus­toms Con­trol and Man­age­ment Act, con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice, was pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment on April 5, and the Har­mo­nized Sys­tem 2007 cus­toms code for clas­si­fy­ing im­ports was im­ple­ment­ed on April 2.

The mis­sion chief said tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance in March al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed the com­ple­tion of a tax ex­pen­di­ture study and the es­tab­lish­ment of an in­sti­tu­tion­al over­sight and re­port­ing frame­work for state-owned en­ter­pris­es with­in the Min­istry of Fi­nance.In ad­di­tion, he said the Bald­win Spencer ad­min­is­tra­tion adopt­ed a sys­tem to im­prove com­mit­ment con­trol for cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture projects.

Ban­nis­ter said of the re­main­ing fis­cal re­forms un­der the pro­gramme, the IMF ex­pects that two "im­por­tant bench­marks" linked to the pre­sen­ta­tion to Par­lia­ment and pas­sage of the Tax Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Pro­ce­dures Act will al­so be com­plet­ed be­fore June.

He al­so said that the IMF ex­pects that 24 out of the 28 fis­cal, debt, civ­il ser­vice and pub­lic en­ter­prise re­forms un­der the pro­gramme will have been achieved by the end of the pro­gramme in June, "a note­wor­thy ac­com­plish­ment that will help sus­tain pos­i­tive fis­cal and macro­eco­nom­ic re­sults go­ing for­ward".

Ban­nis­ter said some progress has al­so been made on fi­nan­cial sec­tor is­sues, stat­ing that stand-alone leg­is­la­tion to gov­ern the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion is "on track" for pre­sen­ta­tion to Par­lia­ment by mid-May 2013 and ef­forts con­tin­ue to­wards im­prov­ing com­pli­ance with An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing/Com­bat­ing the Fi­nanc­ing of Ter­ror­ism (AML/CFT) stan­dards.

CMC