ROSEAU, Dominica (CMC) — Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has defended the economic policies of his administration and dismissed suggestions that the island could be seeking assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Winding up the budget debate on Tuesday night, Skerrit told legislators that the island’s debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) is within a manageable range.

“Our debt to GDP is not at 120 per cent or more. That’s when the IMF comes in, when your debt-to-GDP is 120 (per cent)-plus. They are coming to rescue you.

“Our debt-to-GDP ratio, our national debt, now stands at 67 per cent and if you take out our guarantees for the AID Bank and to DOWASCO it will be 51 per cent,” Skerrit told Parliament.

He said the guarantee to the AID Bank is to provide cheaper financing to the private sector to create jobs.

“So it is an investment. So we don’t want any IMF prescription.

“IMF is our friends; they are my friends I like them; they like me too, but we don’t need them because they have confirmed, Madam Speaker, that there is no fiscal unsustainability in Dominica at this stage.”

During his contribution to the debate, Opposition Leader Lennox Linton said that since 2005 the Dominican economy has struggled to maintain a growth rate of less than one per cent on average, well below economic performances in the rest of the region and significantly less than the five to seven per cent required to generate sustained employment and to reduce the growing incidence of poverty on the island.

“Repeated policy action in budget after budget presented by this administration have failed to address economic growth and Dominica’s growing unemployment problems with the resultant social ills, which continues to plague our country,” he said.