JAMAICA is set to draw down US$255 million in loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) with the money to be steered towards refinancing high interest debt coming to maturity shortly. The IMF loan has a longer maturity — 20 years — and the low interest rate it is priced at, in an environment of rising borrowing costs globally, should help bring significant savings each year to the Government’s coffers and in the process, free up funds that would have otherwise be used for interest payments to be spent on other things.

The funds, while not yet accessed, are now available after the IMF board expressed satisfaction with the progress that has been made to strengthen the country’s resilience to the physical and fiscal impacts of climate change. It will be the first drawdown from the US$764-million facility which was entered into in March of this year. The country at that time also entered into an arrangement to have access to US$968 million under the Precautionary and Liquidity Line (PLL). The country now has access to US$611 million of that PLL fund but has indicated that it will continue to treat the loan as precautionary, meaning, the funds will only be accessed if needed. The PLL is to provide insurance against risks from higher commodity prices, a global slowdown, tighter-than-envisaged global financial conditions, and new COVID outbreaks. It too is a low-interest loan which is to be repaid over 20 years, if utilised, at low interest rates.

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/us255-m-boost/