Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
British High Commissioner to Jamaica, Jeremy Cresswell (right), listens to Omar Davies (left), Minister of Finance and Planning, and Ambassador Derick Heaven (second right), executive chairman of the Sugar Industry Authority. They were speaking before the launch of the U.K. Department for International Development Country Assistant Plan for Jamaica, held at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, St. Andrew, yesterday. Also in photograph is Dr. Wesley Hughes, director of the Planning Institute of Jamaica. - NORMAN GRINDLEY/DEPUTY CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
THE UNITED Kingdom will provide Jamaica with project assistance and debt relief amounting to £24 million (J$2.7 billion) over the next three years.
Launched yesterday at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, New Kingston, the U.K.'s Department for International Development (DFID) Country Assistance Plan (CAP) will give £2.5 million (J$280 million) per year in direct aid. The money will be concentrated chiefly in the areas of community safety and security, and improving access to public services. The DFID said the work would be designed to contribute to the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Another £5.5 million ($610 million) per year will be given as debt write-off to Jamaica.
Britain was welcomed as Jamaica's "best willing partner" at the launch by Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr. Omar Davies.
"We recognise the vulnerability to violence, people living in poor urban communities including children," said British High Commissioner Jeremy Cresswell. "(We) understand this as a dimension of poverty and we also understand that alienation from mainstream social and economic life can be itself a cause of crime."
The British Government, the High Commissioner added, would also be supporting Jamaica's reform of its public sector as he said, poor people needed to have better access to public services, a sentiment echoed by Dr. Davies.
Part of the DFID funding will go towards Government's new Community Security Initiative (CSI), which although still in development, is intended to provide greater access to public services in crime 'hot spot' areas.
The funds for debt relief will, however, be conditional on government's fiscal performance. Dr. Davies, however, criticised the approach of linking aid for social programmes to macroeconomic performance, arguing that there needed to be greater consistency between departments of donor countries.
"It's too often the case," the Finance Minister said, taking care to mention that he was not referring to the British donor (but) "that we have macroecomomic targets and because you have not made them, those who have promised you support for social programmes withhold that support on the grounds that those macroeconomic targets have not been met."
However Sandra Pepera, head of DFID Caribbean said the CAP, also known as a medium-term framework could be used for dialogue between macroeconomic targets and social policy. "Let me assure you that it is very important to us that we are coherent and consistent in our policy messages on a single country," she said.
