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Jamaica's economic turnaround again highlighted in international media
- June 19 2019
- http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business-observer/jamaica-s-economic-turnaround-again-highlighted-in-international-media-jamaica-s-economic-turnaround-again-highlighted-in-international-media_167749
Jamaica continues to be highlighted in the international media for its economic turnaround of recent years, with the latest article being printed in well known and respected Miami Herald.
The story entitled 'Jamaica once couldn't pay its light bill. Now its economy is welcoming Porsche and BMW' was penned by writer Jacqueline Charles, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and recipient of the 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize for her reporting on the Americas.
Charles notes in her piece that following on Jamaica's debt burden of US$20 billion in 2013, weakening international reserves, increasing poverty, low growth, and a situation where in 2013 “the national debt took up 54 per cent, or US$3.8 billion, of the country's budget”, Jamaica has dramatically improved its situation.
She cites the addition of new hotels in Kingston, the availability of luxury cars — such as Porsche in the market, the growth of call centres, “new luxury high-rises” and the “popping up” of Starbucks coffee shops as symbols of the island's economic recovery. She notes that “banks are extending credit and foreign investments are pouring in.''
Charles also presents her readers with the evidence in statistics and numbers, pointing to the fact that interest rates are at an all-time low and unemployment has fallen from 16 per cent in 2013 to eight per cent in the first quarter of 2019.
What were the initiatives that brought about a reversal on such a precarious economic path, she asked?
“Among the tough belt-tightening decisions that got it here: improving tax and customs collection; speeding up construction permits and business registrations; imposing a three-year freeze on public sector wages; privatising its main airport and seaport; and restructuring billions of dollars in domestic debt,” Charles writes.