The Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries - Jamaica

THE MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES – JAMAICA itself, borrowing too much money, which also led to driving up the cost of money. A banker told me, this morning, that because the gov- ernment’s appetite for borrowing money has so drastically gone down, they are being forced to find new methods of attracting private sector loans. So, now, that’s part of the major turn- around that’s taking place in the economy.” BVM: What did you do as Minister of Finance to help that turnaround occur? Shaw: “When I became Minister of Finance in 2007, the government was borrowing mon- ey in the international capital markets at 12 percent. That’s ‘junk bond’ rates. And I changed that completely. I re-engaged aggressively with multi-lateral institutions like the IMF (Inter- national Monetary Fund), the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), the European Union, so that by 2011, we borrowed US$600,000,000 from the IDB at interest rates between two and three percent. That was a radical shift in government policy. “And the other thing that is driving the local financial sector to become more accommodat- ing to the productive sector is that we created a junior stock exchange in 2009. The junior stock exchange has helped to make our stock ex- change the most vibrant in the world over the past five years, in terms of growth; it has grown 240 percent. BVM: With so much success at the Ministry of Finance & the Public Service,why did you move to Industry, Commerce,Agriculture and Fisheries? Shaw: “I was, perhaps, destined for this job. I helped my father plant Irish potatoes and milk the cows and raise the pigs and chickens. In 1969, when I was 17 years old, I was elect- ed national president of the Jamaica Four-H Clubs. But, in March of this year, I received the Caribbean Outstanding Finance Minister Award from the Global Monitoring Report, the official reporting people for the World Bank and the IMF, and subsequently got the Finance Minister of the Year Award from the Jamaica Observer newspaper. So, maybe the Prime Minister figured that I had reached a plateau there and needed to find another area of challenges. And what more could it be than this experiment combin- ing industry, commerce, agriculture, fisheries, and investment.” BVM: Investment? How did that become part of the ‘experiment,’ as you call it? Shaw: “When the Prime Minister appointed me to the position, he took investment from his office and added it to my portfolio. There are about 40 agencies that report to the Prime Minister’s office in the areas of economic growth and job creation. And now, a similar number of agencies report to my office. So, the Prime Minister’s office and my office are the two ‘super’ ministries in the country.”