Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness says the fiscal crisis of the 1990s under the former People’s National Party administration served to retard the progress of Jamaica’s entrepreneurial class by decades.

The prime minister sought to drive home the point while addressing business owners at the Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Linkages Day put on by the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce at UTech’s Papine campus in St. Andrew on Tuesday.

Mahiri Stewart tells us more.

It’s called the FINSAC-era in dubious honour of the government entity created to stabilise the country’s fiscal system following its near collapse in the 1990s.

The period was marked by high interest rates and high inflation that saddled the government with a public debt that exceeded 100 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, GDP. That debt has only recently been paid off.

Prime Minister Dr. Andrew Holness says the scars of this period run deep to this day.

Beyond the fiscal and economic damage, Prime Minister Holness says the country’s entrepreneurial spirit was also damaged.

The prime minister says the government policies of the day contributed to this decline, while also cultivating a hostility toward profit-seeking ventures.

Dr. Holness says the return of entrepreneurial confidence has only now begun thanks to the work of his administration.