Jamaica Predicts 2.5% Growth

The government is projecting 2.5% economic growth for Jamaica over the 2018/19 fiscal year, and newly appointed minister of industry, commerce, agriculture and fisheries, Audley Shaw, says he is totally committed to achieving that target, AFP reported. Shaw said that he has been passionate about agriculture since he was a teenager, and has been looking forward to put his experience and knowledge as a minister to the benefit of the agricultural sector. The minister said that he was impressed with the potential for growth in the sector that he has seen since moving to his new ministry, as well as the willingness of Jamaican youth to invest both money and effort into planting crops and manufacturing items from the various raw materials. He stated that much of what he had learnt as minister of finance and the public service would be valuable in his focus on the problems facing the micro-economy. “The micro-economy is where every citizen can find an opportunity somewhere to be more productive and to make a decent living, and a big part of Jamaica’s solution to move from poverty to prosperity must be for us to take agriculture seriously,” he said.