The in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings agency, Moody’s, has up­grad­ed Ja­maica’s long-term is­suer and se­nior un­se­cured rat­ings to Ba3 from B1, chang­ing the out­look to sta­ble from pos­i­tive.

The up­grade re­flects a decade of strength­ened in­sti­tu­tion­al and pol­i­cy frame­works that have an­chored fis­cal dis­ci­pline and en­hanced mon­e­tary cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Ja­maica has re­duced gov­ern­ment debt by near­ly 40 per­cent­age points of GDP since 2020, out­per­form­ing peers de­spite the tem­po­rary fis­cal set­back from Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

Ac­cord­ing to Moody’s, it ex­pects Ja­maica to main­tain its com­mit­ment to sus­tained pri­ma­ry sur­plus­es, keep­ing debt on a down­ward path af­ter a short-term in­crease re­lat­ed to dis­as­ter re­cov­ery spend­ing.

The gov­ern­ment has mo­bi­lized ap­prox­i­mate­ly J$6.7 bil­lion in fi­nan­cial sup­port from in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions to ad­dress the hur­ri­cane’s im­pact.

The rat­ing agency fore­casts a re­al GDP con­trac­tion of near­ly two per­cent in 2025 and ze­ro growth in 2026.

Emer­gency and re­con­struc­tion spend­ing will in­crease gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture by five per­cent­age points of GDP above pre-storm fore­casts.

Debt-to-GDP is pro­ject­ed to rise to 68 per­cent in fis­cal year 2025/26 be­fore re­turn­ing to 64 per­cent by fis­cal year 2028/29.

Ja­maica’s dis­as­ter risk man­age­ment toolk­it, in­clud­ing cat­a­stro­phe in­sur­ance, pro­vides about $660 mil­lion in im­me­di­ate liq­uid­i­ty, re­duc­ing the need for more ex­pen­sive com­mer­cial bor­row­ing.