Business
Simpson-Miller: Jamaica would benefit greatly from a Greece-style bailout
(Bloomberg) — 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 (IMF).
“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 Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) 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 percent of GDP in 2011, according to the IMF.
Debt Burden
An official with the opposition JLP 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 percent of GDP, with Greece fourth at 165 percent.
