Vision 2030 Jamaica

When Portia Simpson-Miller took the oath of office on January 5, 2012, she assumed more than the prime ministership —…

Jamaica’s snap election on 29 December 2011 produced a result that surprised even the winners. The People’s National Party won…

On 25 September 2011, Bruce Golding announced he would not seek re-election as Jamaica Labour Party leader and would leave…

Jamaica’s second consecutive budget under IMF supervision held the fiscal line while revealing the growing social tensions that prolonged austerity…

After two consecutive years of GDP contraction, the Jamaican economy began its long-awaited turn in 2011 — delivering positive growth…

As 2010 drew to a close, Jamaica’s external accounts told a story the domestic economy could not yet match: reserves…

In a summer of careful balance sheets and persistent economic pain, Jamaica’s fiscal managers delivered results that surprised even the…

In a summer of careful balance sheets and persistent economic pain, Jamaica’s fiscal managers delivered results that surprised even the…

In a summer of careful balance sheets and persistent economic pain, Jamaica’s fiscal managers delivered results that surprised even the…

The 2010/11 budget, presented to Parliament on April 8, 2010, was not a document about ambition. It was a document about arithmetic. Every number in it had been negotiated with the IMF, checked against primary surplus targets, and reviewed for compliance with a Stand-By Arrangement that Jamaica’s creditors and multilateral partners were watching with unusual attention. The government had secured its programme. Now it had to deliver one.

When the Jamaica Debt Exchange closed at the end of January 2010, the government had expected broad participation. What it got was something closer to a national act of faith. Ninety-nine point two percent of eligible domestic bondholders had voluntarily surrendered their existing securities for new bonds with lower interest rates and longer maturities — a participation rate that would be cited internationally as one of the most successful debt exchanges in the developing world. The IMF Board’s formal approval followed twelve days later. Jamaica had, against considerable odds, bought itself a chance.

The Housing Sector Plan is an integral part of Jamaica’s Vision 2030, aiming to position Jamaica as a developed country…

In the fourth quarter of 2009, Jamaica needed three things simultaneously: a new Bank of Jamaica governor, a deal with the IMF, and some evidence that the economy might eventually stop contracting. It got all three. The governor arrived in December, the IMF agreement was initialled days later, and the GDP figures, when finally tabulated, confirmed that 2009 had produced a 3.4 percent contraction — the worst in a generation. Whether the deal would deliver recovery was another question entirely.

By July 2009, Audley Shaw’s monthly revenue figures had become impossible to explain away. The bauxite refineries were dark. Remittances were declining for their thirteenth consecutive month. And the government that had tabled Vision 2030 just weeks earlier — a twenty-one-year plan for national transformation — was running a monthly deficit of J$2.5 billion. By the end of that summer, there was one decision left to make.

Standing before Parliament at the worst economic moment in a generation, Prime Minister Bruce Golding did something that surprised almost everyone who thought they understood Jamaica’s politics. He presented a plan for 2030. Not a rescue plan. Not a recovery plan. A transformational blueprint for an entirely different kind of country — one that would take twenty-one years to build, outlast at least four governments, and require a quality of national discipline that Jamaica had never previously sustained.