EDITORIAL - Be bold on investment and jobs, Mr Golding

Barack Obama understands that it is not enough for America to merely emerge from the worst recession it has faced for nearly 80 years. He wants robust growth, which should, in turn, create the jobs to replace the hundreds of thousands that were shed during the meltdown.

So, President Obama has signalled a shift in strategy. A week ago, he announced that the life of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board - led by ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and set up at the height of the crisis to help steer the economy out of the woods - had come to an end.

It has been replaced by a Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, chaired by Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of the giant manufacturer General Electric (GE). The council is to provide the White House with ideas for accelerating the recovery and making the US economy more competitive against its global counterparts.

"Our job is to do everything we can to ensure that businesses can take root and folks can find jobs," Mr Obama said in an address to workers at the GE plant in New York state, where big engines are manufactured. "We are going to build stuff and invent stuff."

Focus on job creation

This newspaper endorses those sentiments and the project that they underpin. There is a rider - we wish they were coming from Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

Indeed, for several months we have argued logically, attempted to inveigle, and sought to coax, prod, push and even harangue our Government into the position similar to the one being taken by President Obama. In fact, we urged Prime Minister Golding to make a focus on job creation his New Year's resolution, and for the rest of his time in office.

There has been little discernible traction.

Hopefully, President Obama's initiative will be a fillip to our own Government, which faces many of the same issues of the US administration, with a stubbornly high unemployment rate of more than nine per cent.

In our case, although the rate of decline has slowed, and is now turning flat, the economy has endured 13 consecutive quarters of negative growth. Some jobs were created in the last quarter, but not near sufficient to replace the nearly 100,000 that were lost during the worst of the recession. Our jobless rate of nine per cent masks a deep crisis of underemployment, which Prime Minister Golding can correctly argue long preceded his administration.

Lacking Imaginative initiative

The administration can make the case, too, that under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund, it stabilised the macroeconomy, helped, in no small measure, by private-sector acceptance of, and support for, the rescheduling of more than J$700 billion in domestic debt. This reined in a galloping fiscal deficit. But the fiscal programme has been contractionary.

What has been lacking is an imaginative initiative, engaging the private sector to drive growth, as this newspaper first proposed early in 2008 when the global crisis began to take a firm grip of Jamaica.

But, as the saying goes, better late than never. Our suggestion to the PM, as his administration prepares its Budget, is to pull together a team of private-sector leaders to agree on the top-five policies that will drive investment and create jobs. Then implement them.

Mr Golding, too, should make himself chief cheerleader of such an initiative.

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.