{"id":13620,"date":"2018-03-20T11:46:13","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T15:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/?p=13620"},"modified":"2018-03-20T11:46:13","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T15:46:13","slug":"pm-says-debt-to-imf-to-be-fully-paid-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/pm-says-debt-to-imf-to-be-fully-paid-off\/","title":{"rendered":"PM says debt to IMF to be fully paid off"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Antigua and Barbuda government says it intends to fully repay by Tuesday, the US$117.8 million loan given to the island by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) nearly eight years ago.<\/p>

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In 2010, the Washington-based financial institution approved the multi-million dollar loan to the Antigua and Barbuda to support the government\u2019s plan to recover from mounting government debt, weak economic growth, and the effects of the economic crisis.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Gaston Browne, said then that St. John\u2019s had only US$13 million outstanding and two weeks ago, the government made a payment of eight million US dollars to the IMF.<\/p>

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Last September the country was refused a moratorium on the debt despite the natural disaster that destroyed over 90 per cent of Barbuda and incurred over US$150 million in reconstruction and recovery costs.<\/p>

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\u201cI gave instructions\u2026to the Ministry of Finance to liquidate the IMF loan on Tuesday. We are paying it off in full,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Browne said that he is not aware of any country in this hemisphere \u201cin recent times that would have borrowed as much as 10 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) got bail out\u201d as he criticised the then Baldwin Spencer administration for entering into the IMF agreement.<\/p>

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\u201cGenerally speaking an IMF programme is when the government would have failed, cannot meet its obligations, would have had balance of payments difficulties and had no other way out or other alternative but to go to the IMF.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever you go to the IMF it signals bad governance,\u201d\u201d he insisted adding that the government then \u201cdid nothing constructive with the money\u201d it borrowed from the IMF.<\/p>

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Browne is leading his Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) into Wednesday\u2019s general election which he called more than a year ahead of the constitutional deadline.<\/p>

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The party\u2019s main challenge will come from the main opposition United Progressive Party (UPP) that governed the island up until 2014.<\/p>\n

In the last general election, the ABLP won 13 of the 17 seats with the remainder going to the UPP.<\/p>\n

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The Antigua and Barbuda government says it intends to fully repay by Tuesday, the US$117.8 million loan given to the island by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) nearly eight years ago. In 2010, the Washington-based financial institution approved the multi-million dollar loan to the Antigua and Barbuda to support the government\u2019s plan to recover from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nPM says debt to IMF to be fully paid off - Antigua News Room<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/pm-says-debt-to-imf-to-be-fully-paid-off\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PM says debt to IMF to be fully paid off\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Antigua and Barbuda government says it intends to fully repay by Tuesday, the US$117.8 million loan given to the island by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) nearly eight years ago. 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