Year: 2013
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‘Time hard and the dutty tough’, but…
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Observer – WE have a sense that the Government's version of JDX, being called the National Debt Exchange Offer, is a smart way to squeeze $17 billion annually out of the system, without sending the nation into panic. We will return to this tomorrow in this space. But at the same, we also have the sense that Monday…
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Our Hands Are Tied – Stakeholders Reluctantly Accept New Debt Exchange
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Observer – It was not a happy group inside the Bank of Jamaica Auditorium in Kingston yesterday morning as Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and Minister of Finance and Planning Dr Peter Phillips hosted the launch of the National Debt Exchange (NDX). The second of its kind in three years, Simpson Miller has indicated that the offer is…
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Government planning to tax churches, charities?
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Observer – ELIMINATING discretionary waivers altogether could return $4 billion in revenue to the Government. But the tax breaks, which are approved after applications are considered by the finance ministry, mostly go to charitable organisations, while public sector bodies and government contracts take up a significant portion of the rest. What's more, with a targeted primary surplus of…
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EDITORIAL – Debt Restructuring Merely One Step
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Gleaner – Monday night's unprecedented joint broadcast by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and Finance Minister Peter Phillips about the proposed restructuring of Jamaica's domestic debt – and other measures to reform the economy – is a welcome first step. But Mrs Simpson Miller and Dr Phillips will understand if this newspaper, as do many other Jamaicans, wants…
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Exporters escape incentive cuts, for now
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Observer -THE Jamaica Exporters' Association (JEA) is breathing a sign of relief in the face of planned fiscal cuts by the Government. The association said it has been assured that statutory incentives to its members will remain intact though the Government continues to grapple with fiscal consolidation. “The obligations that the Government has already put in place will…
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Cuba tones down Castro’s positive words on Chavez health
HAVANA, (Reuters) – More than a week after former leader Fidel Castro was quoted in Cuban media as saying Venezuela’s cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez was “much better,” the Communist Party newspaper published a different, toned down version of his comments yesterday. The transcript n Granma, said to have been “reviewed and updated” by Castro, left out the more positive assessments…
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S&P downgrades Jamaica’s credit rating
(Jamaica Gleaner) Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Jamaica’s sovereign credit rating from B- to selective default in response to the Government’s debt exchange programme. Selective default occurs when a borrower elects to delay the repayment of some of its financial obligations while fully honouring others. Standard & Poor’s says it sees the move by Jamaica as a default of its…
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Hillary Clinton moves on
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Stabroek News – It is something of a truism of United States politics that a president makes his own foreign policy. Yet instances arise that project American secretaries of state into a position of obvious influence that induce the citizens of that country, as well as of other countries, to make a distinction between the thinking of the…
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