Business
IMF forecasts strong growth for the Caribbean
During the 2008-09 global economic crisis, Caribbean countries and Africa did experience a downturn, however, they bounced back more rapidly than the rest of the world.
The analysis of the Spring Meetings comes on the heels of a comprehensive review of its concessional lending instruments, encompassing both the funding model for subsidy resources and the design of the facilities.
This latest review follows on the 2009 overhaul of concessional lending, which changed the architecture of the IMF’s lending facilities to make them more flexible and responsive to the diverse needs of low-income countries.
The IMF said the review accomplished several objectives, including the establishment of a self-sustaining funding model for the IMF’s concessional lending. The review also aimed to make lending to low-income countries more flexible by raising the cumulative borrowing limit under the Rapid Credit Facility, the IMF’s channel for delivering quick emergency support; allowing loans to be augmented more quickly when shocks hit; and relaxing some of the restrictions on the use of precautionary lending facilities.
At the Spring Meetings, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced his objective of “setting an expiration date” for extreme poverty by reducing the percentage of people living on less than US$1.25 a day to 3 percent by 2030, from 21 percent in 2010.
The IMF said this objective, endorsed by the joint IMF-World Bank Development Committee, will lay the foundation of a strategy that the World Bank says it will present at the Annual Meetings in October 2013. -(CMC)
