Holness: Jamaica building resilience from years of crises

Jamaica has spent 38 years or well over half of its 62 years of political independence recovering from crises.

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, who made the disclosure, cited the oil crisis of the 1970s; the FINSAC “debacle” of the 1990; the 2008 global recession; and the Coronavirus pandemic as examples.

“Two of the four major crises that we face were directly caused by the bad economic management of the PNP in the 1970s and 1990s accounting for 24 of those 38 years,” said Holness, making reference to the main parliamentary opposition, the People’s National Party.

He was making his contribution to the 2025-2026 Budget Debate in Parliament on Thursday.

Holness said resilience is now a new feature of the Jamaican economy, noting that his administration is focused on building fiscal buffers.

Holness said this is being done through provisioning the National Disaster Funds, maintaining high reserves, securing insurance and issuing a catastrophe bond.

“This is why we were able to recover quickly from the pandemic, other natural disasters and geopolitical shocks,” he said.

The prime minister also addressed concerns raised by the main parliamentary Opposition that Jamaica is in a technical recession, evidenced by two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

He noted that the last two quarters were impacted by Hurricane Beryl and Tropical Storm Rafael, but vowed that the Jamaican economy “will quickly return to growth”.

“Resilience is in our DNA, we likkle but we tallawah”.

-Livern Barrett

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