58 February 2016 - Business View Caribbean
Talking Business: Helene Davis-Whyte
30 minutes with a member of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee
The Economic Programme Oversight Committee con-
sists of persons from the private sector, the public sec-
tor and civil society of Jamaica, who will receive and re-
view information from the government on the progress
of implementation of the Memorandum of Economic
and Financial Policies over the life of the International
Monetary Fund’s Extended Fund Facility.
The IMF had conditionally agreed to assist Jamaica as
it deals with prolonged fiscal turmoil.
The committee will assist in ensuring that the agreed
targets are achieved and advise the public through the
media of any concerns or developments. Its formation,
according to committee member Helene Davis-Whyte,
was both mandatory to ensure the tenets of the IMF
agreement and demanded by the Jamaican people in
order to ensure a level of government fiscal account-
ability.
In other words, if the public was to make sacrifices, it
wanted to make sure they were legitimate.
“(Public sector) workers were of the view that this
would’ve been the third period of wage fees that they
would’ve been asked to endure and their view was
that we needed to do everything to ensure that such a
request would not be coming to them again,” she said.
“They felt that this could only be accomplished if we
