ST. GEORGE'S, GRENADA, Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - GIS: The Grenada government has delivered on its promise of creating jobs for its citizens.

Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Dr. the Right Hon. Keith Mitchell laid out the facts about this at Tuesday’s presentation of the 2014 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.

The 2014 budget was filled with projections and plans by the government to put people back to work and food on their tables.

During the year, a number of projects were rolled out creating some much needed jobs mostly in the field of construction, which showed the largest growth in 2013.

Under the Sandals La Source construction project, one thousand five hundred people found employment; private home construction five hundred; feeder roads project, one hundred and fifty; concrete roads, two hundred; NIS complex project, forty; and the new Imani programme, two thousand.

This brings the total  number of people finding employment since government assumed office in March to 4,390.

This number however, does not include the debushing and some other short term employment opportunities created by government.

“Since 4,000 persons out of a labour force of 60,000 have now found jobs, this means that the unemployment level has fallen by 6.7% this year,” Prime Minister Mitchell said. 

“Furthermore, since the Labour Force Survey has established that the rate of unemployment is now 33.5 per cent, the Survey also proves that the unemployment rate was at least 40.2 percent before we assumed office.

Employment has risen. Unemployment has fallen. We have begun to deliver on our promise of jobs, jobs, jobs”.

Even with such a major impact on the country’s unemployment rate which stands at 33.5 percent according to a labour force survey in September this year, Dr. Mitchell believes it is still unacceptably high and must be reduced