Breaking Jamaica’s low growth cycle

In last week’s article, entitled ‘Jumping off the fence’, we covered the story of why Keith Duncan reluctantly decided to abandon his long-standing independence to become a government…

In last week’s article, entitled ‘Jumping off the fence’, we covered the story of why Keith Duncan reluctantly decided to abandon his long-standing independence to become a government senator. As perhaps with recently appointed Senator Ramon Small-Ferguson, whose contribution Duncan also mentioned in his state of the nation speech, the need to pick a side may suggest we need to think again about whether independent senators should be part of our constitutional arrangements, as occurs in Trinidad and Tobago.

However, the main part of Duncan’s speech — ‘Breaking the Low Growth Cycle’ — was not the focus of our media. Of course, the media’s apparent cynicism is unsurprising, as much of our population have now lost hope in faster growth because we have been waiting so long. Duncan offered a comprehensive review of our performance since 2016 and the issues we need to address, of which we will only touch the surface today.

Achievements He started with our accomplishments, such as macroeconomic stability (particularly the reduced price volatility and increased availability of foreign exchange); the strengthened institutional framework, including an independent central bank and fiscal commission; all complemented by our recently tested “disaster risk framework” for climate shocks. In addition, Jamaica has a resilient and well-regulated or “sound” financial sector, a far cry from the days of the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac).

Crime Greater fiscal space has supported investments in infrastructure, and notably national security, in which a $90-billion investment in Plan Secure Jamaica has reduced murders from 1,355 lives in 2016 to a year-to-date October 24 low of 431, creating the possibility of what Duncan calls a “peace dividend” as an “economic strategy”.

The work on education transformation, Duncan noted, has been ongoing for decades and is now led by Minister of Education Dana Morris Dixon, with 47 per cent of the recommendations of the Orlando Patterson report being actioned, according to the Education Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC). Chaired by noted economist Dr Adrian Stokes, Duncan said Stokes advised him that “we are making progress”, but “we’d like to go faster”.