The Jamaica-IMF dance of discomfort

Irrespective of anything Minister of Finance Audley Shaw may say or wish to say about his prowess and understanding of business and finance, the fact is the administration's relationship with the IMF has been anything but smooth. I don't know whether to call it fox-trot, salsa or samba - all lively, elegant dances with intricate movements. It certainly can't be a waltz since it is anything but smooth.

It is really a set of jagged movements linked to changing and/or contradictory melodies emanating from one partner, the observably junior one. To the listener and onlooker it appears like dancing partners in absolute discomfort.

The mashed toes though, are purely Jamaican. What is worse, sometimes it is the Jamaican right foot stamping upon the left instep!

For in the beginning, jobs were the keyword. Following in the blocks was the foolhardy supreme optimism, that the 2008 Wall Street meltdown would have no impact on Jamaica.

We fired Governor Latibeaudierre with apparently trumped up accusations, which the governor challenged Minister Shaw to voice outside of Parliament. Haven't heard them yet.

The Jamaica debt exchange (JDX) was the path out of the wilderness and, of course, there is always the fallback that our minister boasts of, in his own reckoning, that he is really a businessman.

In the past, he operated and knows how to run a business and, therefore, knows what Jamaican businesses need in order to thrive.

Insult to Jamaicans

Honestly, it is a bit of an insult to the Jamaican people for Mr Shaw to tell us this. I don't recall his winning the Observer Businessman of the Year, or any other award for good business. Even if he did, that has nothing to do with capacity as a finance minister, or for that matter any minister.

A minister must possess judgement, have analytical and political skills, be able to ask the right questions of his technocrats and choose among a shaft of competing proposed solutions - presuming he possesses competent, confident technocrats, which we must admit seem to be a breed endangered by our politics.

If anyone believes that Minister Shaw or former Minister Davies or Seaga could single-handedly sit down, or run about, and manage the finance ministry, they would be living in a fool's paradise. If any minister himself believed that, then he would be a fool.

Our need in a finance minister is not PR and bluster. We need an articulated plan derived from a set of policies consistent with an array of mutually agreed and defined objectives. Try as I might I am unable to see this unfolding before my eyes. I see ad hoc decisions, like policy-on-the-fly.

Arrears in wages are to be paid, then no, then yes; duties on motor vehicles seem to bear no relationship either to the number of vehicles on the road, their fuel consumption or energy policy. Taxes are to be increased - maybe? Common external tariff changed to impact manufacturers and poultry farmers negatively. Tourism interests still get their waivers while ministerial power to grant these proliferates.

This is not what people expected from their Government. Initially people would wait and see. Today, the taxi driver, rightly or wrongly, feels the Palisadoes highway is a money tree for partisans, unnecessary. The man at the Half-Way Tree square worries. His Government, he claims, is batting like the demoralised West Indies team. The higgler at Coronation market and other downtown areas complain of 'tings gettin 'arder'. These are not good signs.

Documents and plans from the Planning Institute of Jamaica, from IMF agreements, from Ministry of Agriculture production outlook, etc, may exist - but something is missing.

Is it that there is need for fresh eyes, second opinions? Is it that the critical element lacking is the maestro, the conductor who knows the score, and can therefore actually direct the proceedings?

A mere political retreat or cabinet reshuffle shall not solve this problem.

wilbe65@yahoo.com