Finance Minister Off to Haiti as Jamaica Attempts to Weather the Economic Crisis…PM Golding

As Jamaica continues its efforts to weather the economic crisis, Finance Minister Hon. Audley Shaw will leave the island today for a meeting in Haiti with representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank. The bank will be celebrating its 50th anniversary and all the senior officers will be in attendance.
Prime Minister the Hon. Bruce Golding says the function will provide an opportunity for Minister Shaw to sit down with the head of the IDB, Mr. Luis Alberto Moreno and discuss commitments that are important to Jamaica.
“We have to keep the dialogue going, because when we are passing through this kind of fire storm, we need every friend that we can find who is prepared to offer assistance”, Mr. Golding told hundreds of Jamaicans attending the Ocho Rios St. Ann leg of his Town Hall meetings last night.
He noted that two weeks ago he had told Parliament that the IMF discussions would continue at the technical level and that towards the end of the month the Minister of Finance would take a report to Cabinet with his recommendations as to how the country going to face this crisis in terms of our external fund. That submission will be going to Cabinet on Monday (July 20).
“When cabinet makes that decision, Minister Shaw may well be authorised to make a formal application to the IMF. When that is done this is when you start to negotiate with the fund. We have been engaging them in discussions up to now because we want to know what the terms and conditions are likely to be.”
“Those are the things we want to find out, which is why we have been in constant dialogue so that when we get to the stage where we have to decide whether to formally apply for a standby facility, we know the terms on which this is being done,” Mr. Golding told the meeting.