On Wednesday, September 22, 2010, The Mona School of Business will be hosting a lecture by Dr. Auguste Kouame from the World Bank on the topic "Jamaica and the World Bank's Development Policy Loans, 2009 to 2011- Recession, Restructuring, Reform".  The presentation will commence at 6 p.m. in the Executive Lecture Theatre of the Alister McIntyre Building.

Any consideration of a return to a peg by Jamaica is not an exercise in textbook abstraction nor can it be the result of a simple comparison of Jamaica and Barbados in 2010. A fuller historical comparative analysis will conclude that stronger macroeconomic results in Barbados are due to greater sustained commitment to fiscal prudence that also guaranteed the preservation of peg and parity.

Perhaps the most critical change needed is the acceptance by tertiary education institutions of the necessity to achieve their goals of instruction, research and public service through mobilizing a larger proportion of their own resources and using the existing resources more efficiently.

What we are witnessing in Jamaica today is really a ‘recession within a recession.’ In the past decade Jamaica has only been able to muster a paltry 1.4 % average annual economic growth due largely to a weak macroeconomic multiplier and high levels of import in relation to GDP. Achieving higher growth rates with stability will require transforming the pool of unemployed into a productive force with an export focus; embracing innovation, quality and productivity; a renaissance of the ideas of Lewis and proponents of Plantation Economy theory; and the exploration of new ideas.

With the global tourist industry now emerging from one of its toughest periods in recent decades the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) is forecasting a 3-4% increase in international arrivals in 2010 and a 2-4% rise in the Americas region. Assuming the forecast holds and the Jamaican industry maintains the resilience shown in the past two years the industry is likely to achieve stronger visitor arrivals this year, putting it in a position to stimulate economic activity locally