ST. GEORGE’S GRENADA, March 23, 2017 –GIS: A leading official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has identified four areas responsible for the dramatic decline of Grenada’s national debt under the Keith Mitchell led government.

Nicole La Framboise, the head of the IMF mission on a recent trip to St.George’s says debt relief and restructuring, fiscal adjustment and strong GDP growth are the factors triggering a big fall in the public debt.

The IMF official says restructuring accounted for a third of the decline of the national debt while the move from deficit to surplus helped the reduction by another 10 percent.

“Debt has been reduced by the efforts of the government to restructure to meet with its creditors  and work out an arrangement to either reduce the actual principle owing which they did  with a lot of creditors  and/or restructure the payments. You had strong growth. That accounted for approximately 19 percent of the decline in the ratio,” La Framboise said.

La Framboise told a news conference here this week that public debt is forecast to fall to 72 percent by the end of the year, a drop of 36 percentage points from its peak of 108 percent in 2013.

The Grenada government is attempting to slash debt to GDP ratio to 55 percent by 2030.

“As a member of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) there is a formal agreement to reduce their debts to 60 percent of GDP by 2030,” La Framboise explained.

“So when this government was developing its own programme, they also wanted to go a little further and they chose a target in the medium term of 55 percent GDP. And that is the target laid out in the fiscal responsibility legislation”