FINANCE Minister Audley Shaw is optimistic that the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will today accept Government’s application for a US$1.25-billion stand-by agreement with the organisation.

“It is expected that they will be considering it sometime in the morning and we are confident that the board will be granting its approval which would be consistent with the earlier approval that was granted by the executive management committee of the IMF,” said Shaw, addressing journalists at a post-Cabinet press briefing yesterday.

He noted that, if accepted, the agreement “… will mark a very significant point of departure in the operations of the Government in Jamaica because it will signify that there are certain things that we have been doing that we can no longer continue to do”.

Shaw said one of the key pillars of the new type of governance would be a fiscal strategy aimed at making the public sector more efficient, including the restructuring of Government agencies.

“There would be no sacred cows, we would be looking at every agency and each agency will have to justify the continuation of its own existence,” he said. “Some agencies will be merged, others will be closed down and their work subsumed by central Government.

“The aim is to deliver services more efficiently to the people, cut out waste and cut out corruption wherever it exists,” he noted.

The fiscal strategy also involves the divestment of several loss-making state entities and the sale of some 90 other state assets. Among those entities which are to be divested are Air Jamaica and the Clarendon Alumina Production (which represents the Government’s 45 per cent ownership in Jamalco).

The finance minister also identified debt management as one of the key pillars on which it will govern and said that the Jamaica Debt Exchange programme — which involves holders of Government of Jamaica bonds returning high interest earning instruments for bonds with lower yields and longer maturities — is an integral part of this strategy. He announced that participation from bondholders in the programme was now up to 95 per cent, up from 91 per cent a week ago.

Shaw noted that the window to participate is still open for the remaining five per cent — mostly individual bondholders — that has not yet accepted, and he expressed confidence that they will all come on board by February 16, when the programme is formally implemented.

“I want to make it very clear that the Government of Jamaica is profoundly and deeply appreciative of the extraordinary, overwhelming, if not unprecedented response of the financial community, of ordinary Jamaicans, pensioners and everyone who has decided to come on board of this debt exchange programme,” he said. “It represents a significant point of departure in the economic life of our country.”