Prime Minister Andrew Holness
By Racquel Porter
Prime Minister Andrew Holness has acknowledged that every previous climate event has pushed Jamaica to borrow.
Mr. Holness made the acknowledgement at the launch of the Building Jamaica Better Fund and the Hurricane Beryl Relief Coordination Committee on Monday afternoon.
The Prime Minister, while responding to Michael Lee Chin of NCB Financial Group's attempt to sum up and compare previous damage to infrastructure, from major weather events, said he is not in a position to disclose the value of the damage caused by Beryl.
"What happened before is that every climate event pushed us into more borrowing, so a part of our debt trap was as a result of having to borrow to recover from climate events" he acknowledged, adding that the government was "trying to avoid going down that trajectory".
But he said, with Jamaica having a great brand, global and local philanthropy "will chip in and help".
Still, he admitted that this help will only sustain the country for two or three weeks, so "the country has to have its economic and financial house in order to carry out the recovery".
"So we are mainstreaming climate resilience in our budgeting process by building buffers and reserves and by literally budgeting for storms, so that when climate events happen, we are not forced into a position where we have to borrow. We may borrow, but we are not forced into borrowing," he said.
comments powered by Disqus
All feeds
