Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Foreign Trade
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Minister Shaw Calls for Stimulus Package for Small Vulnerable States
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Medellin, Colombia:
Sunday, March 29, 2009
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| Minister of Finance and the Public Service Minister, Hon. Audley Shaw (3rd from left) with (from left) President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Luis Alberto Moreno; former Jamaican Prime Minister, the Most Hon. P.J. Patterson; and IDB Alternative Executive Director for the Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica, Ambassador Richard Bernal, at the 50th anniversary conference of the IDB being held at the Plaza Mayor Convention Centre in Medellin, Colombia. |
Minister of Finance and the Public Service, the Honourable Audley Shaw, today (Sunday, March 29) called on the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and other multilateral development partners, to put in place economic stimulus packages for small, heavily indebted, and highly vulnerable economies like Jamaica, and other Caribbean countries.
In making the call at the 50th anniversary conference of the IDB, being held at the Plaza Mayor Convention Centre in Medellin, Colombia, Minister Shaw said that unlike developed countries that had provided substantial stimulus packages for their economies, countries like Jamaica cannot afford these initiatives and would have to look to the Multilateral Development Banks (MDB's) for specially funded stimulus packages to assist them to recovery.
Minister Shaw congratulated the IDB for its increased lending programme to Jamaica and the Caribbean region during 2008 and cited policy-based loans as well as the US$300 million liquidity support loan which was recently signed with the Government of Jamaica.
Minister Shaw said that some variation of the liquidity support programme was needed in order to allow for public sector entities, to urgently access some of these funds for investment in vital infrastructure and employment to replace jobs in the Bauxite/Alumina and down sized or closed companies.
He called on the G-20 countries, most of whom were represented at the conference, to give their full support for the replenishment of capital at the IDB, in order to allow the bank to play "a defining and unprecedented role in navigating the region out of this major economic crisis".
The Finance Minister emphasised the urgency to complete the process of capital replenishment, and indicated that the essential decisions must be taken in the next few months to allow the bank to respond expeditiously and with adequate resources.
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