EDITORIAL - Damp squib from Cabinet retreat

The People's National Party (PNP) socialists of the 1970s may have been dismal at managing the economy, but they knew how to rally people to their cause. The PNP of the current era, in so far as we can tell, has lost the art of mobilisation.

So, the Cabinet has just emerged from a three-day special session to discuss the economy and to advance the Government's so-called growth agenda. Very few would argue if we conclude that it was a damp squib.

This issue has added significance because of the need of the Government to build consensus around its economic programme, if Jamaica is to have a chance of dragging itself out of its persisting crisis.

For 40 years, our economy, on average, has grown less than one per cent a year. Part of the reason for the stagnation has been a gourmandising state that muscled the private sector out of productive economic activity.

To maintain itself in this stagnant environment with insufficient tax revenue to finance its operations, the Government borrowed and borrowed. The national debt is now 140 per cent of gross domestic product, in hailing distance of Greece and worse than most of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain) of Europe. Indeed, our debt ratio is more than one-and-half times higher than Europe's newest sick-man, Cyprus.

Further, Jamaica, like other countries in crisis, can find few lenders on the international monetary markets. That is why we have been forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which, in return for $750 million in loan and a seal of approval to take to other multilateral institutions, has demanded that we undertake a series of reforms, including the recent restructuring of a large chunk of the Government's domestic debt.

When she and the finance minister, Peter Phillips, were telling Jamaicans about the so-called National Debt Exchange (NDX), Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller promised to "mobilise" Jamaicans around the project. We interpreted her undertaking, though late in coming, to embrace the entire reform agenda - including the restructuring of the tax and pension systems and an overhaul of the public sector.

Politically difficult undertakings

These, if they are to be done to lasting value, will be politically difficult undertakings requiring Mrs Simpson Miller to spend some of the political capital, with which she is far more endowed than anyone in contemporary Jamaican politics. Further, she is far more capable than her contemporaries at communicating with the majority of the Jamaican people. But more importantly, it is her responsibility as prime minister and leader of the country to get the job done.

We, unfortunately, do not see the necessary robust engagement either from herself or her Government.

The sense is that even at this late stage, on the eve of a new fiscal year, the Government is still scrambling to stitch together a coherent economic and fiscal programme, including an addendum to the NDX. Or, if it has a plan, it has not shared it sensibly with the Jamaican people. It appears to have neither communication strategy nor implementation tactics.

Curiously, this is something that Prime Minister Simpson Miller should know something about. She was around during the 1970s when there was a whole ministry dedicated to national mobilisation. D.K. Duncan, who now sits in Parliament, can't have forgotten that. He was the responsible minister.

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