Summary Of Life And Debt

The documentary film by Stephine Black,”Life and Debt”, it portrayed the impact of international monetary fund (IMF) policies that forced on Jamaica as "conditionals" attached to the loans it gave in late 1970. It revealed how Jamaica's main agriculture sectors; milk, banana, potato, and onions were totally destroyed by opening them up to competition with heavily subsidized US products and the cheap labour markets of other countries. The film showed; evidence of the impact capitalist economic and globalization have on the least developed country in the world, control of the dominant American’s economic in Jamaica and also rich American tourists are enjoying beautiful beaches, and warm weather in Jamaica, while poor Jamaican people are suffering
A Rich country like America saw the opportunity they could have to maximize their export rate when their currency is much higher than other. “ The real exchange rate needs to be sufficiently competitive to promote a rate of export growth that will allow the economy to grow at maximum rate”(John Williamson 1990). The main idea, here, is that this will make Jamaican products cheaper for foreign customers; these customers will be able to acquire more Jamaican money for less. Even with its lower currency, American products are still cheaper. It's easy to see why: the scale of production in the US is so much higher in Jamaica that the final, saleable product is cheaper (Jeffery). As the result, farmers and workers in Jamaican suffer more, as the value of their purchasing is even lower
These Privatisations were encouraged by the IMF and World Bank.” The IMF and World Bank have duly encouraged privatization in Latin American and elsewhere” (John Williamson 1990). When those privatized factories open in Jamaica, capitalism was followed. In the film, many of the Jamaican women were losing their job because their skill was not enough to work in the company. Therefore the company was hiring many skilled workers from Asia. Film brought up different sceneries of the how did the Jamaican economic was destroyed by foreign products of rich country when the out of desperate, former prime minister was in signed a loan agreement to International monetary fund (IMF) that led Jamaica to billions of dollars in debt. Under loan agreement, there was no tax on foreign products; so massive flooding of cheap foreign products dominated the Jamaican local business. This led to increased unemployment, dependency on other countries for basic foods and Jamaican was fallen even worse