Jamaica must recover quickly from economic shocks, says Clarke

By Halshane Burke 

  

Minister of Finance & the Public Service Dr. Nigel Clarke has stressed the need to increase the country's capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from economic shocks.

 

Dr. Clarke says the country has been stuck in a loop of dealing with one shock after another.

 

He pointed to the country having to deal with the effects of Hurricane Beryl almost immediately after achieving the requirements to be removed from the grey list of FATF. 

 

"There is no breathing space. It is crisis on top of crisis that you have to be able to navigate, which is why I've put such an emphasis on resilience. If it is one thing that has characterised my tenure as Minister of Finance and the Public Service, it has been to emphasise the preeminent need for resilience for the Jamaican state to be prosperous and to succeed: resilience economically, making sure we have low debt, high reserves in our central bank and the framework to sustain low and stable inflation and economic and resilience to natural disaster and other forms of resilience," he outlined. 

 

Dr. Clarke was addressing the opening ceremony of the recently held Regional Public Sector Development Conference.