The new pres­i­dent of the World Bank , Ajay Ban­ga, has laud­ed Ja­maica’s cur­rent eco­nom­ic health, not­ing that “your coun­try has man­aged your macro sit­u­a­tion very well”.

“It is not the same for many de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, which took on a great deal of debt when in­ter­est rates were low, both in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic debt,” said Ban­ga who ar­rived here ear­li­er this week.

“The World Bank and the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), as part of the G-20 Com­mon Frame­work, are try­ing to work through how to re­struc­ture some of those debts in a way that makes it more palat­able and eas­i­er for these coun­tries to work their way through,” he said.

Ban­ga was speak­ing to jour­nal­ists on Wednes­day dur­ing a tour of the Con­tent Green­house Clus­ter in the cen­tral parish of Man­ches­ter.

The project in­volves the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of for­mer baux­ite lands for agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion.

Farm­ers are en­gaged in cul­ti­vat­ing crops such as cu­cum­ber, sweet pota­to, cab­bage, let­tuce, hot pep­per in green­hous­es, sup­ply­ing ho­tels, su­per­mar­kets and oth­er mar­kets.

It is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by the Ja­maica So­cial In­vest­ment (JSIF) through its Rur­al Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ini­tia­tive (RE­DI) and fi­nanced by the World Bank. It in­volves col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Win­dal­co Kirkvine/Ja­maica Baux­ite In­sti­tute (JBI) Joint Com­mu­ni­ties Coun­cil.

Ban­ga hailed the project and the use of green­house tech­nol­o­gy in help­ing to build cli­mate re­silience.

This, he said, is key, par­tic­u­lar­ly for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, “as just one hur­ri­cane could dam­age your gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP)… and change every­thing we see to­day with­in three hours”.

He praised the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica for be­ing the pi­o­neer in is­su­ing “some very in­ter­est­ing” cat­a­stro­phe bonds, which en­ables the coun­try to get ac­cess to fund­ing in the event of a ter­ri­ble nat­ur­al dis­as­ter.

Ban­ga said oth­er coun­tries can learn from the ex­am­ple, not­ing that Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Dr. Nigel Clarke, “is will­ing to be a pi­o­neer in push­ing the idea fur­ther”.

The World Bank Pres­i­dent as­sumed the po­si­tion on June 2, and his his­toric trip marks the first time that the head of the world’s largest lend­ing in­sti­tu­tion is vis­it­ing Ja­maica.

Ban­ga said the vis­it to the is­land this week is part of a six-month tour of coun­tries to en­gage with the Bank’s clients, in­clud­ing farm­ers, who are ben­e­fi­cia­ries of World Bank-fund­ed projects.

He said he could learn more from a five-minute dis­cus­sion with a farmer in Ja­maica than he could from a 50-page re­port in his of­fice, not­ing that his role is to “help them to do bet­ter for them­selves”.

“That world re­quires food se­cu­ri­ty; grow­ing your food at the right qual­i­ty, get­ting the right com­pen­sa­tion for it, be­ing able to earn a liv­ing out of it and chang­ing the lives of your chil­dren and fam­i­lies is the first pri­or­i­ty,” Ban­ga not­ed.

The World Bank Pres­i­dent fur­ther com­mend­ed the use of for­mer baux­ite lands for farm­ing, not­ing that “there is dig­ni­ty, pride and out­stand­ing achieve­ment in tak­ing an oth­er­wise mined-out, ug­ly lo­ca­tion and trans­form­ing it in­to a healthy, grow­ing and vi­tal part of so­ci­ety where fruit and veg­eta­bles are be­ing grown”.

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Fish­eries and Min­ing, Floyd Green, who ac­com­pa­nied Ban­ga on the vis­it to the Con­tent Green­house Clus­ter, hailed the farm­ers for their re­silience.

“These farm­ers have gone through COVID-19 and are still here, still farm­ing, still do­ing well, and these are the ini­tia­tives that touch and trans­form lives,” he said.

He not­ed the di­ver­si­ty of young and fe­male farm­ers work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and tran­si­tion­ing from open field to pro­tect­ed farm­ing where they can op­er­ate year-round.

The Min­is­ter said the chal­lenge now is to find ways to repli­cate these projects in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties and trans­form these ar­eas through agri­cul­ture.

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Jun. 15, CMC