THE POVERTY rate declined by 40 per cent to 12.6 per cent in 2018, representing the lowest percentage recorded in 10 years, Finance and the Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke announced in Parliament on Tuesday.
But while acknowledging the sharp reduction in poverty over the 2017 out-turn, Opposition Spokesman on Finance Mark Golding indicated that what mattered to the Jamaican people at this time was the severe economic situation facing the country in the wake of COVID-19.
Clarke was at pains to point out that the rate of poverty in 2018 - 6.7 percentage points fewer than a year earlier - was the lowest since 2008.
Citing the main factors accounting for the overall decline in poverty, Clarke said that in 2018, Jamaica’s economy recorded a GDP growth rate of 1.9 per cent.
Clarke asserted that before the onset of COVID-19 “all of Jamaica’s economic variables, including poverty, were moving in the right direction”.
