Clarke talks tight financial position amid report of more J’cans being food insecure
/ Our Today
administrator
No social spending cuts have been made in order to achieve the savings recorded in the estimates for the third supplementary budget, said Jamaica’s Minister of Finance, Dr Nigel Clarke.
Clarke made the disclosure during a sitting of the lower house on Tuesday (January 26), in which he responded to a comment made about a US Department of Agriculture report, which found that 12.8% of the Jamaican population were considered to be food insecure.
The Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life.
While not directly addressing the findings of the report, Clarke noted that no cuts were made in terms of social supports, as he went on to highlight the very tight financial position Jamaica was in, due in part to the country’s debt dynamics.
“We have navigated this crisis, we have absorbed it, we have been able to respond, but the path ahead is going to require a certain degree of focus. The path keeps us on a track of stability, but it is a very narrow one because of the debt dynamics,” explained Clarke.
“The third supplementary estimates are conditioned on an 11.6% decline in the economy, without much change in our borrowing. Just by that contraction in the denominator, we are likely to see by the end of March, a debt-to-GDP that could be in the range of 108, 109,110. That is the kind of space that, you will know from Jamaica’s sort of recent experience, where our room and the corridor is extremely narrowed,” added Clarke.
Minister Clarke further used the occasion to share that the government’s COVID-19 Allocation of Resources for Employees (CARE) Programme was to continue in January, noting that the programme was on going.
“We have expenditure that will be in our January payment for the CARE Programme and related activities. So it is not that those activities have stopped,” Clarke added.
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