Controlling Jamaica's trade deficit | RJR News - Jamaican News Online

Controlling Jamaica's trade deficit | RJR News - Jamaican News Online: "Last year, Jamaica imported US$6.6b in goods and exported US$1.6b. The trade deficit was approximately US$4.9b. Much has been said about those figures and politicians have eloquently outlined methods to "fix" the trade imbalance without anything been done in the way of actually realizing the goal.

Truth be told, there may be little that can be done to correct the trade imbalance in the short - term. The longer term horizon holds more hope. That is because an examination of the goods we import show that up to 80% of all imports are either consumption or production goods. The latest trade data available for February 2012, show that 40.6% of Jamaica's total imports is made up oil. Machinery and Transport Equipment (mainly motor vehicles) account for 19.7%. Food made up 5.2% and others such as "Chemicals", Manufactured Goods, Miscellaneous Manufactures, Beverages and Tobacco and Crude Materials excluding fuel, make up the rest."

'via Blog this'