JAMAICA OWES Iraq just over $1 billion, the balance on a 30-year-old debt to build an alumina refinery here that never got off the ground.
The Iraqi debt, which is outlined in the Ministry of Finance's Financial Statements and Revenue Estimates 2003/04, released to the public yesterday, showed US$14.71 million owing on the South Manchester Alumina Plant Project, and another US$5.88 million for balance-of-payments financing.
The converted figure adds up to J$1.13 billion which is the amount now outstanding on the loan.
According to Merna Morgan, Deputy Financial Secretary in charge of the Debt Management Unit, Ministry of Finance and Planning, Jamaica has made no payments on its Iraqi debt for about a decade since United Nations sanctions placed limits on the Arab nation's relations with the rest of the world.
The Ministry, she said, would continue to carry the current figure on the books until the United Nations lifts the sanctions - imposed after the 1991 Gulf War against the oil-rich Middle Eastern country, on which a United States-led coalition declared war on March 20.
Jamaica is on record as being opposed to the current war, which the US is wrapping up.
Morgan was unable to say immediately what the original size of the Iraqi loan was, stating that it would take some research, but said it had been serviced to the pre-war period. The Planning Institute of Jamaica, which monitors all overseas loan funds coming into Jamaica, said it had no record of the fund, referred to in the Ministry document as the "Iraqi Fund for External Development."
According to the Jamaica Bauxite Institute, the alumina plant project was conceived during the Michael Manley administration of the 1970s. Attempts to reach Dennis Morrison, a JBI director, and Dr. Carlton Davis, the JBI chairman, for details on the project, were unsuccessful.
