KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica will, over the next two years, likely attain debt levels lower than at any time in the last 50 years, according to Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke.

Clarke spoke to the issue of high debt and its negative effect on the Jamaican economy on Tuesday, as he closed the 2023/24 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives.

“We have to keep on the (current) trajectory to get there (lower debt). If we keep on it, we’re likely to get to a point where debt levels are lower than at any point in the last 50 year,” Clarke emphasised.

He remarked that with the 30-year odyssey of Finsac and the longer arc of high debt over a 50-year period – “it’s easy to put debt on and very hard to take it off”. Clarke noted that a single Government policy can add mountains of debt.

The finance minister lamented that the servicing of high debt has “strangled the chances of generations as servicing debt (interest payments) over half a century has robbed generations of opportunities for a better life”.

And, he said high debt has made economic crises worst, economic shocks more severe and has reduced the fiscal space and flexibility needed to respond to these shocks.

“This has forced Jamaica into lengthy decades-long periods of recovery that have impeded the country’s social, economic and national development,” Clarke said.