Jamaica's economic history is one of paradoxes, and potential - it has an English-speaking, and reasonably well-educated labor force, is close to the world's largest market, the United States, and, has an abundance of natural beauty, which has spurred tourism - and, many of its social, and...

Although the availability of financial resources does not guarantee quality education, it is impossible to achieve this goal without adequate resources which often come from public sources. Understanding how to use resources for education wisely should thus be a top priority for education...

Public sector modernization and public financial management reforms are important areas of focus for Jamaica, particularly because of the impact that fiscal and budget-management practices and policies have on growth. Although the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) has undertaken several initiatives...

The objective of this report is to identify the main obstacles to longer term growth in Jamaica. The report takes a holistic approach, examining a large set of economic and social factors that may be hindering growth and filtering them through a growth diagnostic analysis to narrow the focus to...

This Public Expenditure Review (PER) builds on the commitments of the 2003 Country Economic Memorandum (CEM), and 2002 Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) Progress Report, being its primary objective to assess strengths and weaknesses in key areas of public expenditure, and identify policy options...

Jamaica's poor growth performance has a number of well-known explanations, but they need to be supplemented for the latter half of the 1990s, by the loss of competitiveness. The negligible (measured) GDP growth in the 1990s is usually attributed to two factors: an adverse external climate and...

This report assesses both the mandatory requirements and the actual practices of the accounting and auditing professions in Jamaica, using the International Accounting Standards (IAS) and the International Standards of Auditing (ISA) as benchmarks. The assessment was conducted using a diagnostic...

Sound legislative oversight of public finances is crucial to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of public spending. All national governments, and particularly those that are accountable to their citizens through free elections and the voice of civil society, are concerned with the efficiency...