Julian Robinson
The Shadow Minister for Finance, Julian Robinson has repeated his call for the Government to remove the duties and taxes on electronic devices to give up to 240,000 students an opportunity to own a piece of equipment that is essential to them continuing their education online.
Robinson, who first made the call last June, three months after schools were shuttered when Jamaica confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 10 last year, repeated the call on Thursday. He was making his contribution to the 2021/22 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives.
The 240,000 students he referenced makes up 40 per cent of the approximately 600,000 students in the public school system. The latest survey by the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA) shows that many students are still without a laptop, tablet or smart phone that would allow them to continue their education online.
Dr Nigel Clarke
With revenues down a staggering $72 billion for the first nine months of the 2020/21 fiscal year, Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke has warned that “Jamaica continues to face an extremely dangerous and extremely damaging global economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic”.
“This is by far the worst the worst economic downturn in Jamaica’s history,” Clarke said as the House of Representatives on Tuesday debated and passed the Third Supplementary Estimates totalling $850.3 billion. This is down $3.5 billion from the figure that was approved in the Second Supplementary Estimates.
Clarke noted that, among other things, the crisis has impacted economic output which is forecasted to decline precipitously this fiscal year, having declined by 18.4 per cent in the first quarter and 10.7 per cent in the second quarter. He noted that unemployment leapt from 7.3 per cent in January of 2020 to more than 12 per cent in July 2020 before improving to 10.4 per cent
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