Poverty falls to lowest since 2008

THE POVERTY rate declined by 40 per cent to 12.6 per cent in 2018, representing the lowest percentage recorded in 10 years, Finance and the Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke announced in Parliament on Tuesday.

But while acknowledging the sharp reduction in poverty over the 2017 out-turn, Opposition Spokesman on Finance Mark Golding indicated that what mattered to the Jamaican people at this time was the severe economic situation facing the country in the wake of COVID-19.

“What we need to hear is what is to be done to get the country out of this mess and how the Jamaican people can have their hope restored and the economy can begin to recover,” Golding contended.

Clarke was at pains to point out that the rate of poverty in 2018 - 6.7 percentage points fewer than a year earlier - was the lowest since 2008.

He told his parliamentary colleagues that the decline could be attributed to an increase in real gross domestic product (GDP), a rise in employment, an uptick in some households receiving remittances, as well as a slowing in the rate of inflation.

Citing the main factors accounting for the overall decline in poverty, Clarke said that in 2018, Jamaica’s economy recorded a GDP growth rate of 1.9 per cent. He said that this represented the highest economic growth since 2006.

Clarke asserted that before the onset of COVID-19 “all of Jamaica’s economic variables, including poverty, were moving in the right direction”.

However, this claim was challenged by Golding, who noted that for the December quarter of 2019, there was no growth.

“It is simply untrue that all of Jamaica’s economic variables were moving in the right direction prior to COVID,” he said.

Golding said that the Government’s provision of a safety net for the vulnerable was inadequate for an economy projected to shrink by six per cent in fiscal year 2020-2021.

As the stress of calamity soaks in daily, the cries will get louder and more desperate, Golding added.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com