St. George’s, March 10, 2010 (GIS) – Grenada will host the next meeting of the Monetary Council of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank.
The Council, which recently concluded a meeting in St. Kitts, will hold its next gathering on Friday, July 16, in St. George’s.
At the St. Kitts meeting, which was attended by Grenada’s Finance Minister Nazim Burke, delegates reviewed the current global economic and financial conditions, and their ongoing impact on Grenada and other countries of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU).
“Although recent data suggest that economic and financial conditions are stabilising in some of the major industrialised economies, the ECCU economies are expected to experience a slower recovery from the global downturn,’’ said a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting.
It added that “with the significant reliance on tourism receipts, remittances and foreign direct investment inflows, the pace of recovery will depend heavily on a turnaround in employment and consumption, particularly in the USA, where it is expected to lag behind the rest of the economy. Accordingly, economy activity in the ECCU is projected to decline by a further 2.3 per cent in 2010.’’
The meeting participants, who included four government leaders, decided that in the prevailing economic environment, the “key policy imperative’’ of ECCU member-states “is to protect the stability of the financial system and maintain the credibility’’ of the Eastern Caribbean currency “to support the economic recovery when it starts.’’
It was also recommended that government adopt certain other measures, such as facilitating “private sector and entrepreneurial development,’’ improving “access to finance for new and existing enterprises,’’ and identifying and supporting “productive sector activities which have both a comparative and competitive advantage in the export market.’’
