EDITORIAL - End the economic dithering, please!

THIS PAST week, George Osborne, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, unveiled his plans for dealing with the country's fiscal crisis and long-term debt. He will, over the next few years, slash spending by most government departments by 19 per cent.

Meeting Mr Osborne's target will not be easy or painless for Britain. For instance, on top of a two-year wage freeze, 490,000 public-sector jobs will be chopped over the next four years, or so, by attrition and retrenchment.

Additionally, public-sector workers will have to pay three per cent more towards the cost of their pensions and, by 2018, there will be an equalisation of the retirement age to 65 for men and women. In 2020, the pensionable age will move to 66.

Mr Osborne also announced the removal and reduction of a slew of benefits or services enjoyed by Britons, insisting they are necessary to pull the country back from the financial brink, but which critics characterise as an ideological attack on the welfare state by the Conservative Party-led coalition government.

A clear strategic direction

It is entirely possible to disagree with elements of the policies being pursued by Prime Minister David Cameron's Tory-Liberal-Democratic Party administration, but there is no gainsaying that it has a point of view and a clear strategic direction. Six months in office and it has drawn up plans for more than £80 billion in public spending and set itself on track for implementation.

The contrasts with Jamaica and the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) couldn't be more obvious. After more than three years of JLP government, there is a sense of almost rudderless drift of Jamaica and its economy.

This is not to say that nothing has been done to deal with the country's debt that is more than 130 per cent of the gross dometic product or the fiscal deficit that, at one stage, was heading to over 10 per cent of the value of goods and services produced in the country. Indeed, Finance Minister Audley Shaw will point to the Jamaica Debt Exchange, this year's rescheduling of more than J$700 billion in domestic debt.

Big-picture approach lacking in imf pact

What is lacking, critically, in the standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund, notwithstanding, is an overarching, big-picture approach to the economy, anchored in a philosophy that is larger than fiscal accountability legislation. And there is an absolute lack of urgency in getting anything done.

Take, for instance, the matter of the so-called public-sector reform project, about which the Government spoke loudly and caused many to assume that it would be transformational. It is still limping about somewhere, but with great uncertainty, at least to us, and we suspect, most people, of where it is heading.

In the meantime, the Government maintains an unaffordable wage bill of J$127 billion, which does not tell the whole story. There is another J$15 billion or so that has to be found for the public-sector non-contributory pension scheme.

The pension scheme is an easy fix that can be implemented almost immediately, once there is the will to proceed. Nor can it be so difficult to determine which government departments duplicate others and can be rationalised.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.