Financial Secretary Darlene Morrison - file photo
Financial Secretary Darlene Morrison says the Ministry of Finance has been forced to revise the country's medium-term macroeconomic targets because of the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa.
She says that real GDP growth, or growth after adjustment for inflation, has now been revised to minus 4.3 per cent from the original target of positive 2.2 per cent for this fiscal year.
She noted that the original inflation target of 5.3 per cent has now been revised upwards to 9.5 per cent because of the anticipated bump in local food prices.
The capital or growth budget has also been reduced by $2.2 billion to $55 billion.
Ms. Morrison also says that the fiscal rules have been suspended for one year in order to facilitate a lower primary surplus target to provide more fiscal space to facilitate the recovery and reconstruction process.
The primary surplus is the amount of money that is set aside out of the government's total revenues and grants in order to service the debt.
It was originally projected at 5.2 per cent of GDP or at about $181 billion for this fiscal year.
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