Budget to Provide Stimulus to Enhance Productivity- Shaw

Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Audley Shaw, has said that the 2009/10 Budget, which would be presented in April, would provide stimulus to enhance productive capacity.
“That is something that the government intends to focus on, (and) we have started. This Budget that comes out in April is going to show different avenues of how we are going to have to stimulate the process by which opportunities for economic enablement are put in the hands of our people. Our future is not in handouts… (It) has to be in stimulating the capacity of every Jamaican to be productive. Out of this productivity, we will be able to create the wealth that we need in our country,” Mr. Shaw stated.
He was addressing the contract signing and launch of the sixth cycle of the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) Basic Needs Trust today (March 16), at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in Kingston.
In the meantime, the Finance Minister said that the social safety net “for the marginalized and poor people in our country, is at an all time high.”
He said that registration of persons under the expanded phase of the Programme for Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) has commenced. “We are still maybe, 50,000 or 60,000 people short of achieving the target of 360,000 people, but that process is well underway,” he informed.
As it regards the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), which was implemented at the start of the 2008/09 fiscal year, he said that this has been “used very well.” Under the programme, $2.4 billion was allocated, with $40 million for each constituency.
“It has been used for vital infrastructure, to do community roads, farm roads, some roofing assistance and back to school assistance,” Minister Shaw informed.