Accelerating Growth: Catching the Wave or Missing the Bus

The Central Bank, in its latest Annual Report, has downgraded its growth forecast for 2012 from 8% to 7.2%. This is due to a combination of adverse global developments and the negative effects of domestic policy misalignments. The contractionary measures introduced to address the imbalance in the trade account (ie to encourage the country to live within its means) may well result in growth being less than the 7.2% forecast by the Central Bank. It is important, therefore, that reforms are introduced to accelerate recovery in order to achieve the government’s own growth target of 8% or more. The Pathfinder Foundation (PF) is putting forward some suggestions to begin a discussion/debate on how this can be achieved.