For all its socio-economic challenges in recent years, not least the near decimation of its tourism industry inflicted by COVID 19, the World Bank continues to see Jamaica as being on a positive growth trajectory, asserting at the beginning of 2024 that the island’s economy is poised to continue to grow for a fourth year in a row, albeit at a more gingerly pace than in previous years.
The Bank disclosed in forecasts published earlier this week that the island’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is set to grow at 2 per cent in 2024 this year, down from 2.3 per cent last year, but, nonetheless, commendable when the performances of many of its Caribbean Community (CARICOM) partners were decidedly unflattering. Next year, the country’s growth momentum is likely to continue, though at an even slower rate than in 2024. If this is accomplished it would mark “the second year in a row where growth momentum would prove weaker than the previous 12 months,” according to a report in the Jamaica Observer.
The Observer report points out that in the wider CARICOM group, excluding Guyana, “economies are expected to grow by 4.1 per cent in 2024 and 3.9 per cent in 2025,” a circumstance which it attributes to the “ongoing expansion of the tourism sector”. The World Bank’s forecast for the Jamaica economy comes amidst what The Observer says is “a general warning from the World Bank that the global economy is on track for its worst half-decade of growth in 30 years, due to multiple challenges including higher borrowing costs, geopolitical tensions and weak global trade and investment.” The forecast further asserts that “without a major course correction, the 2020s will go down as a decade of wasted opportunity.”
The full forecast is for global growth to slow for the third year in a row—from 2.6 per cent last year to 2.4 per cent in 2024, almost three-quarters of a percentage point below the average of the 2010s, the World Bank said. The forecast, The Observer report says, “Points to a difficult second half of a decade marked at the start by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, a war in eastern Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and decades high inflation which triggered central banks across the globe to engage in the fastest rise in interest rates in several years. The Israel-Hamas war is also causing worries especially if it should escalate into a broader regional conflict in the Middle East. And World Bank officials express worry that deeply indebted poor countries cannot afford to make necessary investments to fight climate change and poverty.”
Insofar as the region is concerned, the Observer report asserts that “near-term growth will remain weak, leaving many developing countries — especially the poorest — stuck in a trap, with paralysing levels of debt and tenuous access to food for nearly one out of every three people.”
