EDITORIAL - Karl Samuda and the virus of bureaucracy

When it comes to traversing government bureaucracy in order to do business, Jamaica is rated among the most difficult on the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) - 112 out of 139 countries. That is worse than our 95th place on the CGI's overall ranking of competitiveness.

What these ratings say, in effect, is that Jamaica is not a particularly easy place for people with ideas and entrepreneurial vision and capital to quickly translate them to firms that produce goods and services and employ people.

It is far easier to do it in our Caribbean Community partners of Barbados, which is ranked 44th on the GCI, and Trinidad & Tobago, which is at 84. So, Barbados is 51 places ahead of Jamaica on the GCI. Trinidad & Tobago is 11.

Not abstractions

These things are not abstractions. They, for instance, form part of the explanation of why Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago are on the threshold of developed-country status, and why Jamaica is only looking to transit from the first to the second stage of development.

These rankings also help to explain why we were so vulnerable to last week's rains from Tropical Storm Nicole, the cost from which, although not fully calculated, is already almost one per cent of Jamaica's gross domestic product. Really, Nicole's damage is an index of the country's poverty, represented by long years of underspending on public infrastructure.

It is against this backdrop that we welcome yesterday's convening by the investment and commerce minister, Mr Karl Samuda, of what he called a competitiveness council - a get-together of a wide range of public- and private-sector officials who, for the umpteenth time, sought to identify impediments to doing business and get them out of the way.

"We must accelerate the pace at which (government) decisions are taken and actions follow ... so that we release the energies of the private sector," Mr Samuda told government bureaucrats and private-sector leaders.

Mr Samuda's observation sounded very much like the one to Parliament earlier this year by his boss, Prime Minister Bruce Golding, as well as the things the minister used to say when he was in Opposition. Many of Mr Samuda's predecessors said, and promised, the same things.

Part of the problem is that bureaucracy is deeply ingrained, defensive and self-perpetuating - very much like mutating viruses that capture their hosts.

So Reginald Budhan, Mr Samuda's permanent secretary, was recently conceding that "the system is bad", but in the next breath finding arguments against its aggressive overhaul because of a supposedly corrupt private sector.

We heard from Mr Samuda yesterday elements of 'bureaucrat think'. He has to be wary of the virus.

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