FINANCE Minister Audley Shaw says the planned visit to Jamaica of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) team in the second week of September was cancelled because of the need to make further adjustments to Government’s fiscal and medium-term economic programme.

“These adjustments became necessary because of the Government’s decision not to pursue a liability management programme with its bondholders,” Shaw said in a press statement yesterday.

He was responding to a claim by Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller, who told the 71st annual conference of her People’s National Party on Sunday that the IMF was upset at the pace at which Government was conducting negotiations for a US$1.2-billion stand-by agreement.

“It is now an open secret that the IMF is getting increasingly impatient with the incompetent manner that the discussions are being handled by the JLP Government,” Simpson Miller said. “The IMF is so fed up that they have cancelled a scheduled visit to the island because they felt that this Government was not ready to adequately deal with impost issues.”

She urged the administration to provide answers to the ‘critical questions’, and questioned why Government had not told the country about the concerns of the IMF.

Shaw, who accused the Opposition of grossly misrepresenting the state of Jamaica’s negotiations with the IMF, said Government had already explained to the Opposition that the decision was taken after carefully weighing the risks involved, including further downgrade of Jamaica’s bonds and the costly impact this would have on bond prices and interest rates against the benefits to be derived from such a programme.

“As a result of this decision, adjustments had to be made in both the fiscal and medium-term economic programme to achieve the desired macro-economic targets. No useful purpose would therefore have been served by the visit to Jamaica of the IMF team or to Washington of the Jamaican team,” Shaw said.

He added: “As the Government has previously asserted, its fiscal and medium-term programmes and any necessary adjustments thereto are its own creation and are not dictated by the IMF.

“The revised programmes incorporating the necessary adjustments were approved by the Cabinet at a special meeting on Thursday, September 17.

“The consequential documentation will be submitted to the IMF this week by a technical team led by the governor of the Bank of Jamaica, which leaves the island for Washington, DC on Tuesday (today) for detailed discussions,” said Shaw.

The team, he said, includes Financial Secretary Dr Wesley Hughes and other personnel from the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service and the Bank of Jamaica.

“Thereafter, further discussions will take place with the IMF during my attendance at the annual meetings of the IMF/World Bank in Istanbul, Turkey, in early October,” said Shaw.