The International Monetary Fund (IMF) yesterday said that it couldn’t impose growth conditionalities on Jamaica, which is projected to grow the seventh slowest in the world to 2015.

IMF country representative Dr Gene Leon told the Business Observer that growth (a key economic indicator for development) can’t be forced but rather facilitated. However financial analysts, including Charles Ross and Dennis Chung have publicly expressed disappointment at the lack of growth targets set by the IMF for the country despite a slew of other quantitative and qualitative conditionalities under the US$1.3 billion stand-by arrangement with the Jamaican government, signed in February 2010.

“You cannot do it as a conditionality, the idea is to facilitate growth by laying the foundations for growth going forward,” Leon explained via phone from his office at the Bank of Jamaica.

“Most growth comes from the supply side (and it) needs infrastructure, good business indicators and stability. You cannot do it over night.”

The IMF initially focussed on stabilising the “haemorrhaging” in order to “reverse a bad situation” but Leon confessed that more focus would be placed on growth reforms.

He explained that these reforms will be done in collaboration with the World Bank and Inter American Development Bank and address taxation and debt in order to spur private sector led growth.

“The growth is going to come from a private sector led thrust. Taxation and investment incentives has to be right to attract both domestic and foreign investors. There is no magic bullet,” he concluded.

Jamaica will have the seventh slowest growth rate in the world up to 2015, according to a recent IMF report analysed by the Business Observer, indicating missed opportunities for the debt-ridden country. Specifically, it is projected to trail some 143 nations in the world in growth statistics. With projections of about 1.3 per cent annually over the next five years, the island will grow three times slower than the world economy, according to charts within the World Economic Outlook (WEO) published this month by the IMF. Unfortunately, the country’s output or gross domestic product (GDP) dipped even further due to Tropical Storm Nicole which killed about 13 persons and destroyed infrastructure in September.