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KINGSTON, Jamaica- Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Tuesday heaped praise on the outgoing Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr Nigel Clarke, as the House of Representatives paid tribute to the man who held the Government’s purse strings for more than six-and-a-half years, having been appointed minister in March 2018.
Clarke is headed to the Washington DC-based International Monetary Fund to take up a deputy managing director position.
Tracing a friendship going back more than 20 years and a shared vision to see Jamaica develop and realise its true potential, Holness said he appointed Clarke minister with a mandate for him to not only accelerate the implementation of the IMF programme at the time, but Jamaica’s programme of economic reform.
“The things that we had discussed almost a decade before, we now had the opportunity to have those things fully executed,” said Holness.
The prime minister said at the time the discussions took place a decade earlier, “we always knew what to do from a policy perspective, but will we have the political space to do it? That was always the challenge,” Holness said, while noting that the political space was not only determined by the arguments in the cabinet (but) by the people.
The prime minister lauded Clarke for presiding over nine budget cycles without the implementation of any new taxes, the highest net international reserves in decades, and the halving of the national debt from 144 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 74 per cent of GDP.
“These are real things that have happened to transform our economy under the direction of Minister Clarke as the minister of finance,” Holness declared.
Continuing, he said “Minister Clarke presided over legislation to create an independent central bank. It is that independence of the central bank that has made Jamaica probably the only country in the region with a free floating exchange rate”.
And he also noted that Clarke spent quite a lot of his own time seeing to the creation of the Fiscal Commission. “I think that he would call that one his baby,” said Holness, adding that the commission represents an “institutional legacy that Dr Clarke will leave behind because it’s the Fiscal Commission that will ensure that even if the political space has narrowed, that the policies to ensure the fiscal sustainability of Jamaica will remain”.
Speaking directly to Clarke, Holness said “it is that institution that will take our fiscal affairs substantially out of the political domain”.
Holness highlighted that the Rhodes Scholar turned politician and finance minister accomplished something that “we should have been doing a long time ago, but you did it. You issued the first international financial instrument denominated in Jamaica dollars. That’s a legacy, (it’s) historic”.
The prime minister also pointed to Clarke’s role in creating fiscal buffers that allow Jamaica to recover from natural disasters without borrowing, thus no longer driving up the country’s debt.
“For the first time, Jamaica is able to set aside resources but we’ve also created what is commonly termed as a multi-layered risk mitigation risk financing system where, you would have seen it in operation, Jamaica hit by (Hurricane) Beryl and we didn’t have to turn to the international community for borrowing,” Holness remarked.
He said that under Clarke’s leadership, Jamaica was the first small country to successfully issue a catastrophe bond. “That is the achievement of my friend Nigel,” said Holness.
The prime minister also pointed to the overhaul of the public sector wage bill which increased by $200 billion, as another legacy item for Clarke who pushed for workers to be better compensated.
“I am not saying that it is yet perfect, there are still unfinished ends in that endeavor which the next minister will be tasked to address,” said Holness.
“There is no doubt that Nigel is a special resource for Jamaica; that he has served with great dignity, poise and confidence,” he said.
Noting that Clarke was described by a member of the House as “Black Royalty” in a way that was meant to be derogatory, Holness said “I believe he (the member) captured the essence of the man and I’m very pleased to have been associated with you Nigel and very happy to have had the opportunity to have worked with you to get all of what we have accomplished done”.
According to Holness, up to 90 per cent of Jamaicans may not yet understand “what we have done”. It’s going to take decades to truly understand …there are many books that we will have to write to explain how we sat and talked about what we need to change in Jamaica and to plan it so it can happen seamlessly without disruption”.
According to Holness, their partnership worked because they enjoyed a very close friendship “but more importantly, a passion for the vision of improving the lives of Jamaicans”.