Finance Minister Says Dollar Revaluation Due to Monitoring by Working Group

Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Hon. Audley Shaw, says the Jamaican dollar is experiencing a revaluation, due to the Working Group that he established to monitor the foreign exchange market.

In late November, the Minister informed Parliament that he had established a stakeholder group of mainly persons in the financial sector to work with the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ), to deal with issues that had caused the dollar to be sliding against the United States dollar.

“The working group is working, and it is having results, because the exchange rate is revaluing now, coming back to under $129 to the US$,” the Minister told a luncheon, organized by the JN Small Business Loans Limited, and held on December 9, at the Jamaica Conference Centre, in downtown Kingston.

He said there is no shortage of foreign exchange in the country, because there is a record of over US$5.5 billion in Jamaica, and the Working Group is meeting with the BOJ on a weekly basis, to ensure that the foreign exchange market is stabilized.

“There is no objective basis where there should be a continuing slide of the exchange rate,” the Minister told his audience, noting that once the dollar is stabilized, interest rates can be lowered.