john courtneidge: >Any idea of the amount of Jamaica's annual budget that goes away from the >country in the form of interest payable on its National Debt ? > >This might point to the/a cause of the country's poverty. It would be significant, though by no means the only factor. According to the CIA Factbook, Jamaica's foreign debt in 1997 was $4.2 billion. In that year, and probably in all recent years, it was a net borrower, its imports exceeding its exports by a considerable margin. Moreover, it was heavily into deficit financing in 1997, with government revenues about two-thirds of government expenditures. The inflation rate was nearly 10%. GDP declined by 2 percentage points. Meanwhile population grew at a rate of 0.64%. When I was there in November, an international bond rating service (I forget which) downgraded Jamaica to a less favourable, relatively high-risk rating, meaning that anyone who loaned the government money would insist on a substantial risk premium. The government was quite upset about this, but it does seem to reflect the reality of the downward slide Jamaica is in. How the government might be expected to assert anything resembling "sovereignty" over foreign-based interests under the circumstances is beyond me.
