Monday, July 8, 2013

The Economy of St. Lucia

Posted by at

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Max,
The technical expertise to correct our problems appears not to reside either within the Ministry of Finance nor is it part of the skills set of anyone in EITHER POLITICAL PARTY.

First of all, a firm understanding of what it takes to get a real grip on the runaway national debt problem is first and foremost.

Lest we forget, the debt problem consists of a ratio. Simple mathematics: there is a numerator and there is a denominator, namely, debt divided by GDP.

What does this all mean?

a) You can institute policies to address either one or both sets of numbers.

b) You have a raft of policy measures that can be implemented to reduce the size of the ratio, that would serve to make our bonds more attractive. The assumption is that the economic performance, reflected in the dollar figure in the denominator remains more or less the same. The ratio would decline.

c) You also have a raft of policy options and measures that could be implemented to grow the denominator, the GDP figure. That again would have a policy impact of reducing the size of the ratio.

d) Our economic policy experts, to be thorough, should have been using both approaches.

Obviously, the reduction in expenditure in the last budget, notwithstanding its usefulness to a certain extent, does not come close to addressing anything in our external position, nor in our medium- to long-term economic sustainability.

July 11, 2013 at 12:41 PM
Anonymous said...

"Amateurs work until they get it right; professionals work until they can't get it wrong."

July 17, 2013 at 4:36 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)