( L - R ) Wehby, Golding

Prime Minister Bruce Golding has brushed off criticisms being levelled at his administration because of the absence of Finance Minister Audley Shaw from a team that recently held talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Speaking Wednesday night at a town hall meeting in Ocho Rios, Golding said Shaw did not attend the meeting because there was no need for him to have gone.

"Not only is Don Wehby perfectly capable but Don Wehby is not a junior minister, as some people are suggesting. Don Wehby is a member of the Cabinet and, therefore, he has equal rank. He's not the Minister of Finance, he works under the directive of Audley Shaw but he has equal Cabinet rank," Golding said.

Golding went on to draw a comparison to 1989 when then Prime Minister Michael Manley appointed Dr Peter Phillips as a minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister and he was sworn in as one of the first batch of seven ministers seen then as the nucleus of the Government.

"Don Wehby's capacity is no different from that," he said.

The prime minister also said the team which held discussions with the IMF was not particularly extraordinary, and pointed to the absence of the Bank of Jamaica's governor as being the only sign of a difference.

Golding also defended government's intention to return to a borrowing relation with the IMF.

He said with Jamaica likely to lose US$1.3 billion in earnings because of the global economic crisis, it was necessary to borrow funds to plug the gap, otherwise the country would suffer the consequences.

"We would have to restrict the importation of oil because that's a big chunk of our internal account; so that we would have to start rationing gas and lights would have to lock off at certain hours at nights; we would have to start restricting imports of virtually everything; the country would collapse," Golding said.

Shaw