EDITORIAL - Economists absent from JLP's economic council

As we said in the immediate aftermath of its launch, Andrew Holness' Economic Advisory Council is a move in the right direction for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). In the two and a half years since its return to Opposition, the party has been unable to articulate a coherent set of economic policies, much more a strategy for their implementation. It is in need of economic heft.

Mr Holness' council, though, is incomplete, and the JLP leader may well have opened himself to criticism of starting at the wrong end in the construction of the council. For his council, up to now, is short of its most critical components: economists. It is a fact to which this newspaper drew attention last week.

Of course, we call into question neither the competence nor the merits of the four-member core group named by Mr Holness. Aubyn Hill, the council's chairman, enjoys a reputation as a skilled banker, who has enjoyed success in Jamaica and abroad and an enviable willingness to critique or criticise public policy. Fayval Williams, recently installed as the JLP's shadow finance spokesperson, is an investment banker who also worked outside Jamaica and is schooled in the ways of global markets and esoteric instruments.

Patrick Casserly is a successful IT entrepreneur and Colin Williams is a research statistician. They all have competencies that should contribute to robust discourse and debate on the strategies, but more so the tactics that will help to drive investment and growth in the economy.

Lacking expertise

But those tactics have to rest on a foundation of sound economic policies. And this is where Mr Holness has fallen short, in that, as we noted in an early comment, his council is "thin in macroeconomic and fiscal management expertise". No matter who leads the council, the discipline of economics must be at its core and perhaps ought to have priority of appointments, alongside the chairman.

There may be an explanation for why Mr Holness approached the group's formulation in this fashion. There is often in Jamaica a conflation of the disciplines of economics, accounting, banking and financial analyses. It is the former that often gets the short shrift in policy formulation, because the prescriptions of economists in near basket-case economies like ours are not easily politically palatable until acquiescence is all but inevitable.

In the JLP's situation, all is not lost. For Mr Holness and Mr Hill have indicated that the council will call on/have access to a range of expertise as it goes about its job. Indeed, it may have been - we hope it was - to give Mr Hill a free hand to draft these skills why Mr Holness may not have named a broader team. In that event, Aubyn Hill now knows where he must start; by recruiting economists to his panel.

Mr Hill has promised robustness in the work of his council. We take him at his word as well as his appreciation that the policies he formulates could well be implemented by a JLP administration.

So, quality is important. That raises the question about how the group of members with full-time jobs and competing obligations will go about its work. In the circumstances, we expect there will be a reoriented JLP headquarters with research staff and analysts to support the efforts of the team.

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