Saturday, June 06, 2015 | 4:07 PM
Finance Minister Peter Phillips (left) with NCB’s group managing director, Patrick Hylton

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica – Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr Peter Phillips has said that despite Jamaica’s achievement in its Economic Reform Programme and the fact that the economy is returning to growth evidenced by the rebound in its performance for January to March 2015, the country is still at a fragile point halfway through the programme and a lot remains to be done.

He was speaking last evening (June 5) at the official opening of the second staging of the National Commercial Bank Jamaica (NCB) Limited Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) conference in Montego Bay, St James. Over 100 SMEs are in attendance at the three-day conference which ends tomorrow. The theme of the conference is ‘Transformation through Growth”.

“We have a long way to go”. Some of the achievements he pointed out include the reduced reliance on borrowing and consequent reduction in overall interest rates, the decline of its balance of payments deficit on the current account, and the lowering of the average unemployment rate from 15.2 per cent in 2013 to 13.7 per cent in 2014. “This is why we must maintain the momentum, because even whilst our credit ratings continue to improve, Moody’s recently upgraded Jamaica to Caa2 from Caa3 and S&P has moved Jamaica’s sovereign credit ratings from B- to B, our bonds are still considered junk,” Dr Phillips said.

In light of this, he indicated that Jamaicans should therefore recognize and realize that “we must not do anything to reverse or derail the substantive gains that have already been made.”

Minister Phillips stated that gains made in the SME sector have created employment and is the largest employer of labour in Jamaica; have facilitated wealth creation opportunities and form the backbone for private sector growth and expansion. “SMEs create a greater sense of social inclusiveness and social value and harmony and are important parts of the engine that drives the economy and creates equity in our society,” he said, while congratulating NCB for demonstrating its commitment to the SME sector.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/We-still-have-a-long-way-to-go—Finance-Minister