Prime Minister Godwin Friday has described the national debt as a significant challenge that is more severe than he had anticipated before taking office.<\/p>\n
He said the total amount of public debt currently stands at approximately $3.1 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe debt is owed to various entities, including bilateral partner countries, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), and through various financial instruments\u201d.<\/p>\n
Friday said a major concern is that 36 cents out of every dollar of government revenue is currently used to service this debt.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe country has reached a point where it \u201ccan\u2019t borrow much more\u201d and must find alternative ways to meet its obligations\u201d.<\/p>\n
Beyond the official debt figures, Friday mentioned a substantial amount of unpaid payables owed to local businesses. He noted that not honoring these payments removes money from the local economy, though he declined to give a specific figure for these arrears at the time of the interview.<\/p>\n
Friday cited the $3.1 billion debt as the primary reason his administration intends to move forward with a Citizenship by Investment (CBI) program by 2026, as the country requires new revenue streams to plan for the future.<\/p>\n
Friday characterized the overall state of the government\u2019s finances as \u201ctight\u201d and confirmed that the finance department\u2019s transition document revealed a situation worse than his expectations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Godwin Friday has described the national debt as a significant challenge that is more severe than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-366196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}