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Friday, January 16, 2009
Credit rating agencies are already confirming that the need for new money of Caribbean nations and companies is finding doors closed in financial markets.
David Jessop, director of Caribbean Council, London-based consultancy firm on this region, says that Standard and Poors recently expressed that the outlook was weak for a wide range of emerging markets, including the Dominican Republic.
This agency announced its decision to downgrade its ratings of sovereign bonds to negative for the Bahamas, El Salvador, Jamaica and Venezuela.
Estimates suggest global demand for sovereign borrowings rises to three trillion US dollars in 2009, three times more than in 2008.
In the Caribbean, says Jessop in his most recent syndicated column widely published in Caribbean media, this problem may rapidly become the most challenging of all as nations from Barbados to Belize fail to renew maturing financing obligations against a background of slow economic growth, growing unemployment and diminishing tax revenues.
Trinidad and Venezuela, the two nations capable of using their oil and gas wealth to foster a deepening of the regional process are both indicating significant changes in their economies as the collapse in global energy prices impacts negatively on their domestic budgets and their hitherto regional largesse.
For its part Trinidad has announced that it may cut, or even halt, its US$78-million annual contribution to the Caricom Development Fund due to the global financial crisis.
Jessop warns against an emerging policy of "every nation to itself" unlike the move made by Central American countries towards a more united approach to the crisis.
A strong social consensus among the principal stakeholders in the economy: the Government, the private sector, the trades unions and the Opposition might be the smartest solution, like Jamaica has already decided on.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding favours a social partnership involving all actors it might be possible through a national coalition that, besides Jamaica, may put the rest of these nations on the right path to prosperity.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magaz...BEAN_NEEDS.asp
Credit rating agencies are already confirming that the need for new money of Caribbean nations and companies is finding doors closed in financial markets.
David Jessop, director of Caribbean Council, London-based consultancy firm on this region, says that Standard and Poors recently expressed that the outlook was weak for a wide range of emerging markets, including the Dominican Republic.
This agency announced its decision to downgrade its ratings of sovereign bonds to negative for the Bahamas, El Salvador, Jamaica and Venezuela.
Estimates suggest global demand for sovereign borrowings rises to three trillion US dollars in 2009, three times more than in 2008.
In the Caribbean, says Jessop in his most recent syndicated column widely published in Caribbean media, this problem may rapidly become the most challenging of all as nations from Barbados to Belize fail to renew maturing financing obligations against a background of slow economic growth, growing unemployment and diminishing tax revenues.
Trinidad and Venezuela, the two nations capable of using their oil and gas wealth to foster a deepening of the regional process are both indicating significant changes in their economies as the collapse in global energy prices impacts negatively on their domestic budgets and their hitherto regional largesse.
For its part Trinidad has announced that it may cut, or even halt, its US$78-million annual contribution to the Caricom Development Fund due to the global financial crisis.
Jessop warns against an emerging policy of "every nation to itself" unlike the move made by Central American countries towards a more united approach to the crisis.
A strong social consensus among the principal stakeholders in the economy: the Government, the private sector, the trades unions and the Opposition might be the smartest solution, like Jamaica has already decided on.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding favours a social partnership involving all actors it might be possible through a national coalition that, besides Jamaica, may put the rest of these nations on the right path to prosperity.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magaz...BEAN_NEEDS.asp