IMF Shifts Strategy on Caribbean Countries

In an apparent shift of emphasis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is advocating that economic growth be placed at the centre of the recovery of Caribbean islands, many of which have been battered by the impact of the global financial crisis.

In presenting the luncheon feature address on the second day of a two-day forum in The Bahamas, IMF deputy managing director Nemat Shafik said given the centrality of growth to sustainability, ensuring that programme design meets small states’ needs must translate into more focus on growth in the institution’s programmes.

“Hence, we propose to ask all IMF mission chiefs to small states with Fund-supported programmes to include an explicit growth agenda. Obviously, the content of such a section will depend on each government’s preferences and capacity, and we do not envisage imposing any new Fund conditionality,” Shafik said.

The change of focus by the IMF was outlined at a high-level forum on Building Growth into the Caribbean Sustainability Agenda which was held last week Thursday and Friday in Nassau, The Bahamas. The forum was hosted by the IMF and the Government of The Bahamas, in collaboration with the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the World Bank.

(Business Guardian)

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Date Posted October 01 2013