Jamaica’s Growth Agenda

By Dennis Chung
CJ Contributor

Jamaica’s government has placed growth at the front of its priorities.

Since political independence, in 1962, we have only seen growth of any significance in the period 1962 to 1972, and then about three years in the 1980s.

So the focus on growth is definitely what is needed if we are to truly see Jamaica develop relative to the rest of the world.

In order for growth to occur in any sustainable manner, however, there are some fundamental things that must first happen. The most important thing to consider is that “sustainable growth” can only occur in an environment that enables its occurrence. This is no different from the need to create an environment that encourages productivity in a single organisation, or even in a business sector.

So, as an example, if someone is learning how to swim they must have a body of water (such as a pool), proper swimwear and, very importantly, a teacher who is capable of teaching someone how to swim — and more importantly can themselves swim.

So growth can only happen in an environment that encourages capital investment, greater productivity, and where people feel incentivised to work. This is the challenge that we have and continue to have. I don’t think that most of our politicians see the long-term link between the need to improve productivity and work ethic, for example, and sustainable growth. For this reason our State has, over many years, encouraged welfare politics and income redistribution rather than productivity improvement and rewards based on productivity.

The result of this welfare politics is squatter settlements and falling labour productivity, because in order to “get ahead in life”, all you have to do is align yourself closely with a political party and ensure they get in power. This type of thinking has led us to develop labour laws that ensure that unproductive labour is rewarded, which results in the long term with many people being contracted without any permanent employment benefits. This in turn creates lower fiscal revenues for the Government and erodes workers benefits into the future.

When I started writing in newspapers in 2003, I thought to myself that surely Jamaica has the potential to be a high growth rate country and see significant development. This, I thought, was where we were destined to be because of our geographic location, language advantage, tourism competitiveness, music and sports competitiveness, etc.

One of my objectives was to see if I could assist to improve the conversation around development and by doing so help Jamaica to achieve economic success, within a 10- to 15-year time span.

One of my main motivations in 2003 was to see Jamaica become a place where my son would grow up and want to live in. At the time he was nine, and I thought that if as a country we did what was necessary, we could have seen Jamaica truly become the place of choice to live, raise families, and do business, as pronounced in Vision 2030. As a result, I also sat on one of the Vision 2030 sector committees.

This obviously didn’t work out as 16 years later we are still grappling with low growth, low productivity, and social issues. Although in the last two to three years we have made some progress in putting a framework in place to address our economic issues, our social and legislative challenges still remain an issue.

This came home to me even more when last weekend I attended my son’s graduation, where he did a bachelor’s degree in actuarial science, and he said to me that even though he would love to come back to Jamaica to live, he would not because it was too disorderly and had too much crime.

He also went on to say that, in his view, Jamaica would be the best place to live if we could control the crime and bring order to the society. I couldn’t argue with him when he said that, and I thought to myself that Jamaica has once again lost another mind that could help us to develop. And this scenario has played out many times over.

This conversation took place in Des Moines, Iowa, which is the same place the two US missionaries that were murdered in St Mary are from. Sitting down to dinner with two residents there, they brought up the matter and said that they were both very popular in Des Moines, and because of it Jamaica had developed a very bad reputation there and many missionaries who were thinking of coming decided not to.

Jamaica has always had the potential to develop into a First-World country, where our people would prosper and we would not be seen as persons of interest for security personnel in other countries. In other words, we could have easily avoided the label of being “extraordinarily violent”.

The problem we have is that we continue to cause our own demise by our failure to do what is necessary from a governance framework to provide an enabling environment for proper economic and social development, and safeguard the growth agenda we speak about so often but fail to realise.

What we must recognise, though, is that creating this environment is not going to come from the continuation of our welfare politics, or biasing our conversations depending on which political party forms Government. For example, I see on social media all the time where some people argue two different ways before and after the election, on the same point.

Safeguarding our growth agenda means that as a people we must change the conversation and we need to start looking at capital as positive for development, rather than with the suspicion we have always treated it and tax it before it starts working.

We have to create an environment of trust, which means that the security forces and government bureaucracy must respect the citizen and not make it hard for them to live and do business.

We have to bring order to the society, which means harsh penalties for those who dispose of waste illegally or who violate the Noise Abatement Act or who break the Road Code.

Until we bring this sort of order to our country, then someone else will lament the fact that their son or daughter chooses not to return to work and live.