Ja’s economic turnaround extolled in new book
Published:Thursday | January 22, 2026 | 12:13 AMLester Hinds/Gleaner Writer
When Jamaica went from being virtually an economic basket case to being the economic wonder of the world, Jamaican international financial professional Courtney Christie-Veitch decided that this was a story that had to be told.
To this end, he penned the book Resilience in Motion: Jamaica’s Fiscal Transformation and Global Lessons – An Empirical Study of Fiscal Consolidation in a Small Island Developing State.
“As a professional working for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), I saw how international financiers went from looking at Jamaica as a basket case to being a financial wonder, and I decided that this was a story that had to be told. Jamaica was being held up by the IMF and other financial bodies as the model for how a country could turn itself around financially and become less dependent on the Fund for balance of support assistance,” said Courtney.
According to him, his book is one for policymakers, high school students, and others who want to understand Jamaica’s economic turnaround.
“It does not use economic jargon but rather simple language to outline how Jamaica was able to achieve what amounts to an economic miracle,” he said.
Christie-Veitch is a distinguished financial-sector professional, researcher, mentor, and author whose career spans more than three decades in the financial sector across Jamaica, the wider Caribbean, East Africa, and Bermuda. He feels that he is in a unique position to tell Jamaica’s economic story.
It all began for him in Sturge Town, St Ann, where he was born. Like so many Jamaicans, Christie-Veitch grew up with his grandmother, his parents having separated and his single mother, a teacher, unable to take care of him.
He attended Sturge Town All-Age School, walking some three miles to school daily. Not being successful in the Common Entrance Examination, Courtney’s educational journey next took him to Brown’s Town Secondary School and later, Excelsior High School in Kingston.
The next stop on his educational journey was the University of Technology (UTECH), formerly CAST, where he earned a three-year certificate in business studies, a diploma in business administration, and later, a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) with a major in accounting.
After leaving school, Courtney worked for the audit firm KPMG on Duke Street, where he spent three years. From there, he worked as an accountant for United Way Jamaica for another three years and later with Eagle Foundation for Enterprise as a business manager, where he contributed to development financing and community-based enterprise growth.
While at Eagle, he did his Master’s in Finance at Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom. Courtney further advanced his expertise through postgraduate studies in the United Kingdom. He holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Manchester (Manchester Business School) and an MBA in Banking and Finance from Bangor University, Wales. He is also a Chartered Banker, accredited by the Chartered Banker Institute of Wales, reflecting the highest standards of banking professionalism.
STILL STUDYING
He is currently pursuing doctoral studies, deepening his research in financial stability, risk-based supervision, and the evolution of emerging risks in developing markets.
Bank of Jamaica was the next stop along his journey, where he spent 10 years as assistant director, moving up the ladder, becoming a financial inspector supervisor in the financial stability division. For his first seven years, he served as assistant director in the Financial Institutions Supervisory Division (FISD), leading risk-based supervision for banks and deposit-taking institutions. He later transitioned to the Research and Economic Programming Division as a senior economist within the Financial Stability Unit, contributing to macroprudential analysis, systemic-risk monitoring, and early financial-stability reporting in Jamaica.
He then went to work for the Bermuda Monetary Authority as assistant director in banking trusts and investment for five years.
NEXT STOP: IMF
The International Monetary Fund was the next stop on his journey, where he spent 10 years, the first four years working in Barbados, overseeing 18 countries in the Caribbean. He was to spend another five years in Tanzania (East Africa), overseeing seven countries in the region.
Following his stint with the IMF, Courtney returned to Jamaica, where he did consulting work.
Courtney’s career is defined by his commitment to strengthening financial systems, enhancing supervisory frameworks, and building institutional capacity across developing countries.
After nearly a decade of international service, Christie-Veitch returned in 2023 to the Bermuda Monetary Authority, where he currently serves as assistant director, Financial Stability & Macroeconomics. His portfolio includes crisis-management frameworks, macroeconomic surveillance, systemic-risk assessment, contagion analysis, and the development of Bermuda’s national-resolution and crisis-management architecture.
Courtney has a lifelong commitment to service and youth development. While living in Jamaica, he served for four years as chairman of the Jamaica Baptist Union Youth Department and for another four years as president of the St Catherine Baptist Youth Association, shaping youth leadership and spiritual formation across the island.
He is also a dedicated mentor, providing guidance to upcoming professionals, graduate students, and early career regulators across the Caribbean and Africa.
His alumni connections and professional networks position him as an influential voice in financial-sector capacity development.
It is this background that led him to pen the book about Jamaica’s financial turnaround to hold up Jamaica as a model to other developing countries.
The book covers such areas as ‘From debt overhang to discipline’, ‘Institutions, credibility and consensus’, ‘Fiscal therapy, Island edition’, ‘Shock absorption’, ‘Comparative global lessons’, ‘Political energy of reform – Why Jamaica succeed’ as well as a ‘Tool kit for fiscal reliance in small states’, among other topics.
He said that the book was born out of a paradox. For decades, Jamaica was seen as a fiscal laggard, burdened by debt levels that seemed insurmountable, repeatedly forced into IMF programmes, and caught in a cycle of austerity without growth. Few expected the country to escape the trap.
Yet between 2013 and 2020, Jamaica achieved one of the most remarkable fiscal turnarounds in modern economic history. The debt-to-GDP ratio fell from nearly 150 per cent to below 95 per cent. Interest costs declined. Fiscal surpluses were sustained at levels that would challenge even advanced economies. And, perhaps, most remarkably, this adjustment occurred within a democracy, across two competing political parties, without default, and while protecting the most vulnerable.
“The international community had taken note. The IMF, World Bank, and regional institutions now cite Jamaica as a model for fiscal resilience. What was once dismissed as ‘the sick man of the Caribbean’ is now upheld as a global case study in discipline, credibility, and resilience,” he said.
The book, he says, tells that story not as triumphalism but as a guide.
“It is written for policymakers in small states, scholars of political economy, and citizens seeking to understand how resilience is built. It is also written for the wider world because in an age of climate shocks, pandemics, cyber threats, and rising debt, Jamaica’s lessons are urgently relevant beyond its shores,” he said.