Financial Times says Jamaica world’s top performing stock exchange

(Jamaica Observer) The Financial Times has given recognition to Jamaica’s stock market success story in a piece entitled ‘Jamaican stock exchange rallies to become world’s best performing’.

The article examined the stock exchange’s number one rating among “94 bourses tracked by Bloomberg over the past 12 months” against the backdrop of the island’s dramatic economic u-turn in recent years.

The past year saw the $1.5 trillion (US$11 billion) stock exchange advance by 35 per cent and the article noted that “total gains over the past five years come to more than 600 per cent — again, the world’s best performance”.

The Financial Times, viewed as the UK’s top financial publication, explained that Jamaica successfully completed its International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme ahead of schedule and received accolades from the international lending agency for its economic recovery.

This rehabilitation has seen the island bounce back from government debt which six years ago was at 147 per cent of gross domestic product with “a third of the country’s fiscal budget” going to service that debt.

But the article noted that only last month Jamaica “sold US$815 million of bonds at a yield of just 5.8 per cent, which was followed by a credit rating upgrade by Standard & Poor’s (S&P)” and that the success of the stock exchange comes after years of uncompromising faithfulness to the measures required by the IMF as well as maintaining “one of the world’s biggest budget surpluses.’’