Senator Aubyn Hill used his contribution to the 2023/2024 State of the Nation Debate in the Upper House on Friday to defend the Government’s stewardship of the country’s affairs over the past seven years, citing as evidence, among other things, Jamaica’s recently upgraded credit rating by Standard and Poor’s (S&P).

“All-time low unemployment… national commendable effort… great job creation performance for Jamaicans in every single walk of life; those are just some of the words and phrases that have been used in describing the recent announcement by S&P of Jamaica’s best credit rating ever and by Statin (Statistical Institute of Jamaica) of a historically low unemployment figure of 4.5 per cent,” said Hill, the minister of industry, investment and commerce.

On September 13, S&P upgraded the Government of Jamaica’s long-term foreign and local currency issuer default rating (IDR) from B+ to BB-, with a ‘Stable’ outlook. It is the highest credit rating ever given to Jamaica since S&P started rating the country’s sovereign debt in 1999.

Hill argued that the upgrade by S&P cannot be overemphasised and must not be trivialised.

“It is a major achievement for all Jamaicans, not just some; this is a significant and historic credit rating upgrade for every Jamaican,” he said.

Explaining how Jamaica now benefits from this new rating, Hill said that the country can now access financing at costs lower than before, which will result in savings that can be used for other important undertakings.

“We have a loan stock of J$1.1 trillion… about US$7.14 billion. Payments for this is not smooth; it is bumpy, but say we were to pay 10 per cent of that per year of the debt stock we have, that would be $714.3 million annually. When we pay, we tend to borrow it right back… So we borrow it back at one per cent less, because of the upgrade by Standard and Poor’s, your interest rate goes down. So when you borrow it back at one per cent less, you save US$7.14 million a year… Over 25 years, which is what you would normally pay back a loan over, you’re saving about US$178.5 million. That goes to build schools, it goes to buy police cars, it goes to pay part-payments, it goes, I hope, to make sure we get some more investments to businesspeople,” he said.

Hill said an equally great measure as to how well the economy and the country are being run is the employment level.

“The lowering of unemployment and the raising of the number of people in employment pulls into the earning economy many Jamaicans from the lower levels of our national labour force. This is good news for a vast number of Jamaicans who needed the work,” Hill said.

He said that due to the “outstanding efforts” of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government, especially Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, employment has been increasing consistently month after month.

“Jamaicans are seeing and feeling the benefits that the JLP Administration is creating in the new jobs and social services… The best gift a Government can give to a citizen is a job that they get paid every two weeks or every month, not a bonus but a job that you get a regular income and we have been providing a lot of those, in fact, 148,000 since 2020,” he said.

Hill further said that the Andrew Holness-led Administration has fixed and built more police stations than almost any other Government in the country; exports, year on year are up 37 per cent; and gross domestic product continues to go down from 147 — when the People’s National Party (PNP) was in power — to 77 per cent.

He said the JLP Administration has not borrowed any money in the local market and “have not raised one dollar of tax in seven years”, and claimed that four years before the JLP came to power, the PNP taxed Jamaicans $58 billion.

“The prime minister has led his Cabinet to follow a very disciplined, intentional and targeted approach to the economic and social management [of] Jamaica,” he added.