EDITORIAL: GET ON WITH IT! - Tackling red tape a priority

There is little to fault the Simpson Miller administration, particularly its finance minister, Peter Phillips, for the zeal with which it has gone about the fiscal reforms required under Jamaica's economic support agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It ought not to let up.

For, as is now widely appreciated, it was bad management of the country's finances, represented by the Government's excessive borrowing, its near J$2-trillion debt, and history of budget deficits that were at the heart of the country's economic performance over the past four decades. Debt servicing commandeered resources that the Government might otherwise have spent on social and physical infrastructure, while siphoning from the private sector capital that would be invested in creating jobs and stimulating economic growth. So when Dr Phillips comes to table his 2014-15 Budget, he must offer Jamaicans a guarantee that there will be no deviation of the fundamentals of the fiscal policies now being pursued.

However, there are matters with whose reform the Government must get on so as to give itself the best shot of delivering sustained economic growth for which the fiscal reforms are an essential precursor. Among these are corruption and its handmaiden, the bureaucracy.

Should these be presumed to be insignificant issues to the growth agenda, a perusal of the World Economic Forum's Global Competitive Index for 2013-2014 would be useful. Jamaica ranked 94th of 148 countries. But it is what is behind these numbers that is important.

For instance, when people are asked about the most problematic factors in doing business here, the most frequent response was an inefficient bureaucracy - 18.6 per cent. Number three was corruption. In-between them was crime and pilferage.

At the level of institutions that underpin the State, whose efficacy helps to determine whether people have confidence in the country and the competitiveness of its environment, Jamaica is not doing too well. As a country where public funds are diverted, we ranked 88th, and out of a potential top (good) score of 7, we registered 3.3. As a place where the decisions of Government and bureaucrats are based on favouritism, we ranked 107th. For irregular payments and the taking of bribes, Jamaica was 79th.

CORRUPTION AND COMPETITIVENESS

There is an obvious and reinforcing direct relationship between economic competitiveness and inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy which, often, are the outcomes of unwieldy policies and red tape. For, usually, they start as attempts by suspicious policymakers to set trip wires for the private sector, which is presumed to be intent on cheating the State. Mostly, they merely constrain economic activity, as is highlighted in the World Bank's Doing Business report, in which Jamaica is 94th among 189 countries. Moreover, they often morph into enterprises and/or self-perpetuating sinecures to the benefit of bureaucrats.

While Dr Phillips continues his slog with the fiscal programme, it is important and urgent that Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller assign someone to have a go at red tape and inefficiency. This is more important, and urgent, we feel than, say, having Luther Buchanan, a minister of state, inspecting rural clinics.

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