Peg dollar to US counterpart
Published:Friday | March 22, 2013 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
Around five years ago, Zimbabwe had hyperinflation topping 100,000 per cent. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe had to issue its highest denomination banknote of $10 million to keep the country from being bankrupt. This meant that the Zimbabweans would have needed then to exchange about 42 pounds in weight of their own currency to secure just one US$100 note.
Is the Jamaican economy becoming like Zimbabwe's five years ago? As a citizen of Jamaica, I am deeply worried as our dollar is losing ground at an alarming rate daily, with no sight of stability.
I believe in the term 'nothing tried, nothing done'. I would like the Simpson Miller administration to try the repeated suggestion Mr Edward Seaga had made in October last year to peg the Jamaican exchange rate to the US dollar, perhaps on a trial basis of, say, a year at the most, and see where our dollar lies.
This move to peg the Jamaican dollar against our US counterpart would reduce inflation to an acceptable level and, of course, reduce our expenditure in the cost of servicing external debt. After all, it is clear that existing policies to stabilise our dollar in their current form are just not working.
WESLEY THOMAS
Mandeville, Manchester