Business

The unemployment rate for April 2022 decreased to 6.0%, 3.0 percentage points lower than in the same quarter of 2021.

The male unemployment rate fell to 4.7% from 7.5%, while the unemployment rate for females declined to 7.6% from 10.8%. The unemployment rate for youth aged 14-24 was 15.5% in April 2022, which represents an 8.6 percentage point decline when compared to April 2021.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) says investment flows to the Region reached US$134 billion last year, up from US$88 billion in 2020.

According to UNCTAD’ World Investment Report 2022, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America and the Caribbean rebounded from the pandemic-induced slump, growing by 56% and FDI flows to the region had plunged by 45% in 2020, the sharpest decline recorded in developing regions that year.

The Cabinet of the Government of Jamaica has given its approval for a third telecommunications service provider, Rock Mobile, to be granted a licence to operate locally.

Remittances flows to Latin America and the Caribbean grew an estimated 6.5% to $103 billion in 2020, supported by a recovering economy and moderately improving labour market in the USA.

CARICOM Member States however only accounted for 6.8% with total remittances equalling $7.074 B. According to the Migration and Development Brief published by the World Bank, Haiti (US$3.1 B) and Jamaica (US$3.0B) accounted for 86.2% of remittances in CARICOM.

The IMF and Barbados have reached a staff-level agreement on the completion of the fifth review under the EFF arrangement, which was conducted virtually between May 3-7, 2021.

According to the IMF, the economy remains severely depressed by the ongoing global pandemic with tourism operating at a fraction of normal levels. Economic growth for 2021 is premised on a modest recovery of tourism in the second half of 2021.

Dr Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon today took office as President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), becoming the sixth chief executive of the regional multilateral institution.

The Bahamas will shortly select a private group to establish a new statutory body, Invest Bahamas – an independent statutory body that would facilitate the investment process from conception to implementation.

In recognition of the need to streamline the Regional Private Sector’s extraordinary individual and collective response to the devastation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and enhance the inter-agency coordination in times of disaster, the CARICOM Private Sector Organization (CPSO), the Caribbean Manufacturers’ Association (CMA) and the Caribbean Chambers of Commerce (CARICHAM) convened a meeting on April 16^th 2021 with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA).

Saint Lucian Prime Minister Allen Chastanet has presented a EC$1.12 B revenue estimate for fiscal year 2021/22.

The fiscal package, which contains “no new taxes,” represents a 21.3% increase over the revised estimate for the last fiscal year. However this is lower than pre-pandemic years of 2018-19 and 2019-20 in which revenue was recorded at EC$1.20 billion and EC$1.19 billion respectively.

Effective May 8, vaccinated persons entering Barbados will only be made to quarantine pending the results of one locally administered COVID-19 PCR test.

This could result in a quarantine period as little as 24 hours. According to Prime Minister Mia Mottley, a vaccinated person is defined as someone who in a two-dose regime had received both doses plus 14 days, or a one-dose regime plus 14 days.