Boatswain: Be aware of IMF

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The New Today

Week ending Feb 06th, 2010

THE NEW TODAY - Week ending Feb 06th, 2010

Opposition Senator, Anthony Boatswain is warning the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government of Prime Minister Tillman Thomas to be aware of recommendations from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF). Boatswain is suggesting that the government instead should come up with its own home grown solutions to deal with the economic crisis facing Grenada and to beware of those from the IMF.

The former Finance Minister was making his first appearance in the Senate as the replacement for Kennedy Roberts who resigned from the Senate last month to further his studies. In replying to the 2010 Budget as presented by Minister of Finance, Nazim Burke last month, Boatswain spared no efforts in attacking the IMF which he had a close working relationship with him as a minister in the former administration.

In what turned out to be surprising comments, the ex-Minister of Finance, Economic Development, Planning, Trade and Industry told the Senate meeting that the IMF policies are not always right and do not always work. “The IMF is not always right, they have been proven wrong on many occasions and we have been taking the IMF medicine for too long”, he said. “It’s time that the Minister for Finance (Burke) and others realise that and accept that the IMF (medicine) does not (always) work,” he added.

Boatswain has negotiated a number of deals with the IMF for Grenada under the NNP government including the present agreement in 2006 which is being implemented by the current administration. In responding to what he classified as “an IMF style document” from the Finance Minister, Sen. Boatswain said that the package will not be able to stimulate the local economy and that the 2010 budget will result in Grenada creating an army of indigent. He contended that least developed countries like Grenada should not always accept the remedies for economic growth as offered by the Fund because their assessment is not always right with regards to the realities facing the country.

“No Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility will work! The IMF medicine cannot work for Grenada! The IMF medicine cannot cure us now”, he remarked.

Describing Burke as a student of the IMF, Boatswain said that the current Minister of Finance “is swallowing everything given to him with the hope that it will work for the country...”. “...It’s not working and will not work, the IMF cannot cure Grenada’s developmental pains and economic crisis”, he added.

Sen. Boatswain accused the Tillman Thomas-led Congress government of trying to do everything in order to look good in the eyes of the fund. Boatswain’s NNP had moved the national debt from 373 million E.C dollars in 1995 to nearly 2 billion dollars by the time it left office in 2008, forcing the IMF to warn Grenada of engaging in any future massive borrowing.

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Brother Avery - Concern about IMF

|71.39.74.xxx |2010-02-10 07:04:36

It is of up most importance that countrys with Black Marjority countrys should never Take IMF money
nor the world Bank ... The reason the IMF and World Bank was set up to help European countries not
the rest of the world and they have destroyed every Black and Brown country since 1947 Black
countries should take a Page from Asia and orthers and form there own fund so that there cash crops
wont be destroyed , lets name them Hati, all of Africa and jamica and have been destroyed by these
people at the IMF and that is there Goal is to make you dependent on them . ! African people should
know by now that the Man who enslaved you is not the one who will Liberate you !

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