Meetings in Washington Successful – Finance Minister

Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr. the Hon. Peter Phillips, has described as successful, the meetings he held with multilateral agencies in Washington, D.C., while attending the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank spring meeting last week.

“We held a series of discussions with officials at the highest level at the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, IMF, as well as with the US administration in the Security Council, State Department, US Treasury and US Department of Commerce,” the Minister told JIS News in an interview

Coming out of these meetings, the Minister said there is the strong recognition of the quality of the value of Jamaica’s economic reform programme and a willingness to find ways to collaborate with Jamaica to achieve greater levels of growth and employment in the country.

The Minister said the Ministry will collaborate with multilateral agencies and US authorities to fine tune the various discussions that were held.

Dr.  Phillips and his delegation attended the one week IMF spring meeting and also co-chaired the first Caribbean Regional dialogue with members of the G20 Development Working Group and participated in a discussion on Caribbean debt.

Accompanying the Minister were Financial Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, Mr. Devon Rowe; Governor of the Bank of Jamaica (BoJ), Mr. Brian Wynter; Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), Mr. Colin Bullock; Head of the IMF Coordination and Implementation Unit in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, Ms. Judith Green; Chief Economist at the BoJ, Dr. Wayne Robinson and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Jamaica, Marsha Core Lobban.