Dominica experiences economic growth, says IMF

by Paul Charles

Friday, February 13, 2004

ROSEAU, Dominica: A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ended a ten-day review of Dominica's economy on Wednesday with news that the island has experienced economic growth for the first time in several years.

Mission Chief Alejandro Santos told reporters here on Tuesday evening that the island's economy has seen ''incipient growth'' compared to years of decline.

Santos attributed the slight change in fortune to the performances of tourism and manufacturing, however, he was concerned that some key sectors like the banana industry continue to decline with no immediate signs of improvement.

''It's a difficult assessment to make because it's not across the board growth in the economy, there are certain areas of the economy that are beginning to grow but there are other areas of the economy that are not growing and they contracting.

''The objective of the programme is to reach a sustainable level of growth of two per cent over the medium term by that we mean all sectors of the economy,'' Santos noted.

Meanwhile, Coordinator of Dominica's Economic Stabilisation and Adjustment Porgramme, Swinburne Lestrade, disclosed that ten percent of the public sector wage bill would have to be slashed to bring expenditure in line with revenue.

He added that Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit is currently seeking funding from the European Union to offer severance packages to some public officers. 

''The Prime Minister is currently in Brussels with other OECS Prime Ministers negotiating banana-WTO issues but he will also be taking the opportunity to seek to firm up the undertaking, that's the word given by the EU to provide the fund that would be needed for redundancy pay packages for persons who are to be made redundant'' Lestrade disclosed.

General Secretary of the Dominica Public Service Union (DPSU), Thomas Letang, has likened the impending reduction in size of the public service as a bomb waiting to explode. 

The DPSU, the representative body for most of the island's 4,000 public workers, has resisted government's streamlining of the sector with street protests and court action.

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