Published:Sunday | April 17, 2016
WASHINGTON, DC:
Jamaican government officials were having discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this weekend about the remaining year of the 48-month economic programme, including how to make the $1.5 million tax threshold plan work without disrupting the agreed reform agenda.
IMF Mission Chief to Jamaica, Dr Uma Ramakrish-nan, said the Andrew Holness-led administration, when they met with a Fund team in its first week after taking office in late February, committed to seeing the programme through to the March 2017 deadline.
“So in that sense, we are discussing with the Government how to make this tax plan work within the parameters that have been agreed under the programme,” Ramakrishnan told Sunday Business on Friday in an interview on the margins of the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group.
She said there is still a 7.0 per cent primary surplus target that has to be generated for fiscal year 2016-17 based on the programme, “and so the budget envelope in that sense is very clear.”
The mission chief said a Jamaican Government delegation “is in Washington now” and will participate in the ongoing discussions during meetings with them on Saturday and Sunday.
Asked if Jamaica had indicated from where it would source the funds to finance the new tax threshold, Ramakrishnan said only that she knew there was a lot of discussions in the public domain about how it would be done.
“For us it is premature to disclose anything because nothing has been decided,” she said, adding that she did not want to speculate about what the Government might be thinking.
“All I can say at this point on that is that discussions are continuing.”
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