KINGSTON, Jamaica, Sept 16, CMC – Nearly a year after the Category 5 hurricane Melissa slammed into Jamaica resulting in 45 deaths and an estimated US$12.2 billion in total losses, the government is saying that the country’s economy is improving significantly.
Finance and the Public Service Minister, Fayval Williams, Wednesday told a news conference that based on what was projected right after the aftermath of Melissa relative to what’s happening now, “the recovery is on the way.
She told reporters 22 years ago, a storm like Melissa meant Jamaica would have had to enter into a programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), there would have been a run on the local currency and “a decade of austerity paid for by the people who had just lost their roofs.
“This year, it means a deficit that’s J$2.5 billion (One Jamaica dollar=US$0.008 cents) wider than planned. That is what the discipline of the last decade or more brought, is the ability to weather a storm. Yes, I’m going to say not everyone is back to where they were just yet, in terms of where they were before Melissa”.
(Details in Business section)
CMC/2026