The country remains in good standing with the International Monetary Fund despite a $5 million increase in its wage bill this year.

he country’s crippling civil service wage bill has soared by $5 million – which flies in the face of International Monetary Fund (IMF) targets.

Minister of Finance and the Economy Harold Lovell said that the recent release of IMF monies would allow government to give relief to scores of local businesses whose payments are in arrears.

Minister of Finance and the Economy Harold Lovell says that government will continue to financially bail out ABI Bank despite continued ambiguity concerning the future of the country’s relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Government says the EC $54 million of income tax it is looking to collect this year has nothing to do with an equivalent sum that the IMF withheld from Antigua & Barbuda.

Attorney General Justin Simon, QC, on Friday, said though small in size and significant on the world stage, Antigua & Barbuda is a sovereign nation that will not be cowered by a resolution in the US Senate seeking to blackball the country.

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer has backed his administration’s decision to enter an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) while marking his party’s two-year anniversary since it returned to power in the March 12, 2009 General Elections.

An organisation has decided to try to fill a gap long identified as one of the greatest weaknesses of the private sector in Antigua & Barbuda.