Financial crisis: Keep people in jobs

Interview with Nazim Burke, Minister of Finance

Grenada Port authority, St George’s, 2009.

© Hegel Goutier

Diagnosis

We can lump problems into three broad categories. Firstly, there has been a decline in foreign direct investment. Many of the huge tourism infrastructure projects that we anticipated (representing investments of about $US700M) will not happen. Secondly, there is also a decline in the tourism industry itself in term of arrivals and expenditure. In the cruise tourism sector, we still see large numbers of tourists coming even though they are spending less. We anticipate there will be some further decline. The third area has to do with remittances from abroad. Grenadians living abroad in the metropolis are sending less money to the country than they would normally send. Our sense is that it may have declined by about 16 per cent over the last year. Because of the slow down in various sectors including construction, we have seen a fall off in employment.

Adjustment

We have implemented a tax amnesty: a complete waiver of the interests and penalty charges for those who pay the full amount of what they owe the government.

We have also embarked on some short-term construction projects; renovating government buildings, especially those in the health and education sectors. We have intensified work on the road maintenance programme. Our target is to keep employment up. We are about to start another programme that will provide income support for farmers. This also enhances food security.

A review of the key medium and long-term capital projects should be undertaken. We could identify the ones to which we will give priority, and which ones we can undertake by way of joint private/public sector partnerships, or pursue by concessional lending or borrowing, or through bilateral cooperation programmes.

Hegel Goutier

Back to the Table of Contents.

write a comment





If you can't read the word, click here.
CAPTCHA image for SPAM prevention