Norris R. McDonald | Ratios to reality: bread, butter, taxes and Keith Duncan’s paradox!

JAMAICA’S ELECTION season, as usual, makes promises rain down like hurricane squalls! We have heard about tax cuts, growth targets, and IMF-approved discipline; but how realistic are they?

Keith Duncan, a cautious voice of fiscal prudence, criticised Mark Golding’s proposed tax cuts as “unrealistic”. This theme was picked up by Prime Minister Andrew Holness in the recent leadership debate. But unrealistic for whom?

The mother in Spanish Town does not measure debt-to-GDP ratios when she sends her child to bed hungry. The St Elizabeth farmer does not weigh the primary surplus when imported Irish potatoes undercut his yam.

Poor people cannot eat ratios. They eat bread and butter. And here lies the Keith Duncan paradox: what he calls “unrealistic” can, in fact, be financed by plugging the biggest fiscal leak of all — Jamaica’s ballooning food import bill.

THE KEITH DUNCAN BUDGET PARADOX

Duncan argues that raising the income tax threshold begins to create a fiscal hole of $4 billion to $5 billion, depending on how many people benefit. But those ‘holes’ can be plugged by savings on Jamaica’s US$1-billion food import bill.

Even a modest two per cent reduction in imports — about US$40 million in the first year — would more than offset the potential revenue loss, Keith Duncan identifies. And this is beyond any potential general economic growth. Clearly, far from being unrealistic, Mark Golding has a fiscally sound policy.

Edward Seaga once showed how a rolling Budget could spread expenditure over time, plugging apparent gaps. The same principle applies today: import substitution and phased spending can neutralise the paradox Duncan identifies.

Once the conversation shifts from abstract arithmetic to structural leakages, the paradox is resolved.

BEYOND GDP RATIOS: THE REAL LEAK IN THE SHIP

Jamaica spends almost US$1 billion annually on food imports — nearly double the 2016 figure of US$900 million. Every day, ships dock at Kingston wharves laden with milk powder, chicken parts, rice, French fries, and processed foods that Jamaicans could produce locally.

Duncan is correct that tax space cannot be conjured out of thin air. But he misses the central point: the real fiscal hole is our food-import structural dependency, not the income tax threshold.

FOOD SECURITY AS FISCAL STRATEGY

Mark Golding has highlighted food security and local agricultural production. Critics dismiss it as nostalgia, but food security is the hardest form of fiscal realism.

Imagine hotels buying cassava, pumpkin, and callaloo instead of frozen fries. Imagine hospitals, schools, and prisons sourcing directly from farmer co-operatives.

Every Jamaican dollar spent locally multiplies across communities: creating jobs, saving foreign exchange, and empowering rural economies. Import substitution is not sentiment. It is strategy.

Foreign currency saved can fund tax reliefs, social programmes such as primary and STEM education; improved water supply, housing, healthcare, and, most important, invest in agricultural and marketing expansion.

THE IMF STRAITJACKET AND THE POVERTY TRAP

The IMF praises Jamaica for high primary surpluses and falling debt ratios. On paper, Jamaica is a model student. But behind the applause is social collapse: overcrowded schools, understaffed hospitals, crumbling infrastructure, and mass migration of teachers and nurses.

Fiscal discipline has become a straitjacket, squeezing life out of development. When debt repayment takes precedence over children’s nutrition or farmers’ livelihoods, the result is predictable: poverty deepens, inequality widens, and the nation haemorrhages talent. That is not prudence. It is Babylon bondage.

BREAD, NOT RATIOS

My friends, while Duncan offers valid critique, he speaks only in ratios. But economic policy, at the end of the day, is ultimately about food in the pot.

Professor George Beckford, Jamaica’s great agricultural economist, once advised:

“If you want to learn farming, get your head out of the book and sit with the rural farmers who have been looking at the moon and succeeding.”

His point was simple — marry economic science with real-world practice. Think yam, coco, breadfruit, banana, rice, ‘moonshine yam’ and ‘pum-pum yam’. That is where sovereignty lives.

The shopkeepers in Tivoli, Springfield, or Gimme-Mi-Bit do not trade in debt ratios; they trade in flour, sugar, and chicken back. The young farmer in St Elizabeth does not care about primary balance targets; he cares if his tomatoes rot in the field while hotels import ketchup.

Here is the bombshell ‘bitta truth’: poor people can’t eat GDP ratios — dem eat bread and butter.

Therefore, if a Golding government cuts the food import bill and invests in Jamaican farmers, the savings will feed the nation, not foreign creditors. That is fiscal freedom. That is sovereignty in the pot.

FOOD SECURITY AS POLICY, NOT SLOGAN

Jamaica has walked this road before. In the 1970s, Michael Manley’s government championed import substitution and self-reliance. The ‘Eat What We Grow’ campaign was sabotaged by external shocks and IMF diktats, but the principle remains: no nation is sovereign if it imports what it can produce. Other countries prove the point.

Cuba under embargo, India’s Green Revolution, Rwanda’s co-operative model, even Russia under sanctions. Jamaica must chart its own path, where food security is not a sentimental slogan but a fiscal anchor.

THE NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT

My dear friends, what Jamaica needs is not another glossy manifesto. It needs a new social contract anchored in food security and production. By slashing imports and reinvesting the savings, a Golding government could finance tax relief and social programmes without violating fiscal responsibility.

This is not reckless populism. It is dignity. It is telling Jamaican farmers their yam is worth more than frozen fries; telling Jamaican children their lunch does not depend on foreign supply chains; telling taxpayers their money will feed the nation rather than creditors abroad.

SOVEREIGNTY ‘ENNA DI POTOVA RATIOS’

On September 3, Jamaicans are not voting for debt ratios. They are voting for bread, butter, and dignity. The PNP has a chance to shift the narrative from IMF obedience to people’s sovereignty.

Food security must be framed as fiscal freedom. Only then can savings become social investment. And only then can sovereignty feed the nation. You cannot eat GDP ratios. But you can eat banana, cassava, breadfruit, ‘moonshine yam’ and ‘pum-pum yam’.

Time come for Jamaica to build an economy that feeds its people, for the first time at last.

That is the bitta truth!

Norris R. McDonald is an author, economic journalist, political analyst, and respiratory therapist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and miaminorris@yahoo.com.