*** JAMAICAN BUSINESS CONFIDENCE AT LOW POINT. In recent months we have been relatively upbeat about Jamaica, at least to the extent of opposing the view that Jamaica is on its way to becoming a failed state. The good news last month was that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had successfully completed its first quarterly review of Jamaica’s performance under its 4-year US$944m Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement. The good news from the IMF came on 30 September, and in anticipation of this, on 26 September Standard & Poor’s had raised Jamaica’s long-term foreign and local currency credit ratings to…

The ruling People’s Partnership (PP) and its main constituent party, the United National Congress (UNC) are going through a torrid time, with the UNC suffering its fourth electoral defeat this year in the St Joseph by-election. Some of the blame can be attached to the fall-out with former minister Jack Warner, who has been taking votes away from the ruling coalition with his Independent Liberal Party (ILP), but Warner has not made as much progress as he would have liked since his triumph in the Chaguanas West poll in July. The UNC and the PP now have 18 months to…

The pattern of political power in Barbados is for the two main parties to enjoy lengthy alternative spells in power. The ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) had the misfortune to begin its current spell in power in 2008, and it only just held on against the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), by 16 seats to 14, to gain a second term in office in this year’s general election in February. The electorate preferred Prime Minister Freundel Stuart’s unexciting pledge of ‘stability through austerity’ to the BLP’s more expansionist ideas. The problem for Stuart is that the Barbados economy remains one of…

In one of its sporadic clumsy moves, the Havana government in early November moved to shut down home-based small cinemas under the new ban on the re-sale of imported goods. The ban, announced in October, has prompted fury locally, where many of the new private entrepreneurs have set up a flourishing trade selling imported goods like clothes and small consumer goods often brought across by relatives in Miami. Up to 20,000 small businesses and their employees could be affected by the measure, according to a Reuters report, which noted that even local Cuban economists had questioned the measures. One, Juan…

The Dominican Republic (DR)’s energy sector has long been the main weak point of an otherwise surprisingly solid domestic economy. Plagued by chronic production and financing problems, the sector is often considered the main factor holding back the country’s economic development. Successive Dominican governments have sought to address the sector’s issues to little avail. Since taking office in August 2012, President Danilo Medina similarly pledged to fix the sector once and for all. While there has been hitherto little progress on this front, a recent show of interest from the US is fuelling hopes that the Medina administration may be…