Increases in revenue diverted to COVID-19 Crisis Management

Prime Minister Andrew Holness says Jamaica’s strong performance in revenue increases has been eaten away to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Prime Minister says all ministry budgets have been impacted to reallocate resources for the health challenges caused by the COVID-19 crisis. He noted that the Government has increased funding of several billion dollars directly to health for COVID-19 management, but the country’s social safety net allocations have also been increased.

The Prime Minister says funds that have been used for COVID-19 management, such as the revenue increases would have gone to other deserving areas of national life while emphasising that there is still a great demand for resources to respond to natural disasters that affect the island, specifically heavy rainfall that Jamaica experienced in 2020 and earlier in 2021.

“The pandemic has caused a reallocation of resources away from other areas of use, into the management of the crisis, and I believe that Jamaicans would appreciate that the quicker we are out of the pandemic, the better our resource allocation would be to deal with garbage collection, and more resources into education, and crime fighting,” The Prime Minister said.

Holness says though the COVID-19 pandemic has created been a distraction from other important challenges that the country faces, the focus is on ending the crisis.