Part 2: Why is financial inclusion so important, and what challenges does Jamaica face?

After two tumultuous years, 2023 remains characterized by headwinds facing countries across the world. Just as the pandemic’s effects began to dissipate in 2021, a new series of shocks emerged to test Caribbean economies’ fragile recoveries and resilience in 2022, linked in large part to residual impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on supply chains and demand conditions, rising inflation and tightening financial conditions, as well as new global shocks — particularly driven by the conflict in Ukraine.

For more than a year, the Caribbean economics team at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has focused on the potential implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for lives and livelihoods across the region. In this podcast episode, the Caribbean economics team discuss their latest Caribbean Quarterly Bulletin, highlighting two main themes: first, forecasts of key macroeconomic indicators, informed by recent expectations for the speed and breadth of tourism recovery across the region; and second, how financial sector risks have evolved since the onset of the pandemic, including a focus on policies undertaken across the region to dampen the impact of this historic shock on banks, corporates, and households.

#Caribbean #PrivateSector #Businesses #Firms #FinancialAcess #TheBahamas #Barbados #Guyana #Jamaica #TrinidadandTobago Our latest issue of the Caribbean Economics Quarterly, ( https://bit.ly/3S2946d )Finance for Firms: Options for Improving Access and Inclusion highlights new research from the IDB’s Caribbean Department, IDB Invest, and the Complete Caribbean Partnership which shows that firms from across the Caribbean face outsized challenges compared to other countries from around the world when it comes to firm access to finance.

Our latest issue of the Caribbean Quarterly Economic Bulletin highlights new IDB research suggesting that many Latin American and Caribbean countries lag behind most advanced economies in digital and telecommunications infrastructure. Closing these gaps could yield dividends in productivity, employment, and growth—particularly for the six members of the IDB’s Caribbean Country Department (The Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago). For some Latin American and Caribbean countries, the benefits in faster growth outweigh the costs.

Countries have endured over a year of extreme uncertainty due to the COVID-19 crisis, and economies in the Caribbean have suffered more than most. With the increasing availability of vaccines and prospects for a resumption of international travel, we can begin to imagine what a post-COVID tourism recovery would look like.