Jun 2010 Financial News

IMF’s outlook for many regional countries not too bright

Jun 17, 2010

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is painting a bleak picture for several Caribbean economies; predicting that half of the CARICOM member countries will experience zero or a negative growth in 2010.

“As we all know in 2009, eight of the 14 CARICOM countries had a negative rate of growth, and in 2010 the IMF has projected that seven of the 14 countries will have either zero growth or negative growth. So we have a serious economic growth still on our hands,” said Dr. Maurice Odle, Economic Advisor to the Secretary General of CARICOM.

Addressing a media clinic yesterday afternoon, he pointed out that the region is also dealing with a social crisis of rising unemployment figures, as this is now between ten and 15 per cent.

He suggested, however, that the true number is higher as the recorded figures do not take into account all of the people currently seeking a job.

“We all know that we have a high informal economy in the Caribbean, so there are a lot of people who are underemployed who you can barely say are being meaningfully employed,” he said.

Odle noted that those countries not dependent on tourism have been rebounding quicker from the two-year economic slump, pointing out that Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago are “virtually out of the crisis”.

The economic advisor said there was a lag in the economic recovery of the Caribbean due to the “jobless nature” of the recovery in the United States and Europe.

“This jobless recovery has caused the remittance flows to be less than expected and tourism arrivals to be less than expected, partly because these are people-centred activities and this state of joblessness may be a little more persistent than we expect,” he remarked, citing a general reluctance to hire in the post-crisis period due to the thought that competition in the economic environment would be higher.

“So we don’t expect the rate of job creation in the US and Europe to improve in any
significant way soon,” he stressed.

The videoconference was broadcast in Barbados, Guyana and Jamaica. (JMB)


Source:
Barbados Advocate
Thursday June 17, 2010

http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/newsitem.asp?more=business&NewsID=10889