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GOOD NEWS ON REMITTANCES...PM TELLS UWI TOWN HALL MEETING:

  October 7, 2009

GOOD NEWS ON REMITTANCES...PM TELLS

UWI TOWN HALL MEETING:

Prime Minister Bruce Golding says there has been a slow down in the rate of decline in the economy and based on reports he has received, remittances for August have shown an improvement of 8%-compared to the  figures for August last year. The Prime Minister was speaking at his 8th town hall meeting in the Assembly Hall at the UWI, Mona campus last night (Oct 6).

Mr. Golding said September's remittances had also shown an improvement compared to last year. Before the recession, Jamaica was benefiting from remittances by up to $2.2B a year but that too had been badly hit as many overseas Jamaicans were among those who lost their jobs.

However, the Prime Minister  warned that ‘even though the rate of decline is slowing down and the remittances are looking up for the last two months, even though the latest business confidence shows there are some improvements...we still have a long way to go, we still have serious hurdles to overcome'.

He told the large gathering dominated by students that government had engaged in negotiations with the IMF on a standby agreement which is something we were forced to do because of the impact the global recession has had on the country.

Mr. Golding noted two thirds of our bauxite earnings have disappeared and based on projections, remittances would be down by as much as $360M this year, while exports have generally taken a beating.

‘When you lose that kind of level of your foreign exchange earnings, it means you don't have the resources to pay for the things you need...the oil that you need, the medicine that you have to import and the basic food items that we do not produce. If we did not secure an  alternative source of foreign exchange, there would be such a mad scramble to buy the US dollar that the price would take off with such a vengeance that is not ordinary', Mr. Golding said.

He explained again that if government gets the $1.2 Billion from the IMF, that money would go to the Bank of Jamaica so that when foreign exchange is needed to pay the bill for oil and other essential imports, it can be sourced without having to pay high rates of up to $150 for the dollar.