It’s elec­tion sea­son in the Caribbean. Suri­name and Guyana have changed their gov­ern­ments, Trinidad and To­ba­go has stuck with the PNM and on Sep­tem­ber 3rd the peo­ple of Ja­maica will de­cide if they are stick­ing with Labour or if the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Par­ty will be re­turned to pow­er.

If I were a bet­ting man I would pre­dict a JLP vic­to­ry, if on­ly based on the re­cent polling re­sults and al­so Ja­maica’s eco­nom­ic progress over the last five years.

You see in 2013, Ja­maica em­barked on an am­bi­tious re­form pro­gram to sta­bi­lize the econ­o­my, re­duce debt, and fu­el growth.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Bank Pub­lic debt fell be­low 100% of GDP in 2018/19 from a high in 2013 of 150 per­cent of GDP. Ja­maica’s debt is ex­pect­ed to de­cline be­low 60% by 2026/27 in line with the pro­vi­sions of its Fis­cal Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Law. This was pushed back to 2026 from 2025 as the coun­try’s Par­lia­ment passed the law to make the change in light of the chal­lenges to the econ­o­my posed by the Covid 19 cri­sis.

Ja­maica’s un­em­ploy­ment fell to a his­toric low of 7.2% in Oc­to­ber 2019, which is al­most half the rate at the start of the re­form pro­gram.

The coun­try’s Stock Ex­change went up more than 380 per cent and cred­it agency Fitch up­grad­ed the is­land’s debt to B+ rat­ing with a sta­ble fis­cal out­look..

These are all im­pres­sive num­bers es­pe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that T&T has gone in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. This coun­try has run deficits now since 2008 when the late Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning was in pow­er and the fi­nan­cial cri­sis hit T&T.

The coun­try’s spend­ing on trans­fers and sub­si­dies was dou­bled un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment and while the last Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has re­duced the sub­sidy on gaso­line it has not been able to dis­mount the trans­fers and sub­si­dies from the tiger’s back.

An im­por­tant el­e­ment in the suc­cess of Ja­maica ac­cord­ing to the World bank was a strong com­mit­ment across po­lit­i­cal par­ties, over two com­pet­ing ad­min­is­tra­tions and elec­toral cy­cles. The coun­try al­so crit­i­cal­ly ben­e­fit­ed from a sus­tained so­cial con­sen­sus for change and the strong back­ing of the pri­vate sec­tor.

This is a cru­cial les­son that we must learn and at time of writ­ing this Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had not yet been sworn in and there­fore the coun­try had not yet been told who is the new Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

I was re­cent­ly in­vit­ed by the Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Unit of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to be part of a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties of the next five years and as I said then, make no mis­take this coun­try is in se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic strife and would re­quire ex­em­plary lead­er­ship if we are to claw our­selves out of this dif­fi­cul­ty.

It is why the new op­po­si­tion and gov­ern­ment must work to­geth­er to get the nec­es­sary re­forms passed for the more ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient col­lec­tion of tax­es and the oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive re­forms need­ed. This is not just a time for heal­ing it is a time for es­pri de corps, for a stead­fast fo­cus on fis­cal dis­ci­pline, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, so­cial jus­tice, dig­i­ti­za­tion and crime fight­ing strare­gies. The gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion must set coun­try goals which both must com­mit to and it must not be about all the spoils go­ing to the win­ners, even though the pop­u­la­tion has giv­en the PNM its sup­port to con­tin­ue in of­fice.

Ja­maica has gen­er­at­ed pri­ma­ry fis­cal sur­plus­es of at least sev­en per cent of GDP for the last six years, and re­mains stead­fast it its com­mit­ment to fis­cal dis­ci­pline.

So in sev­en years of dis­ci­pline, po­lit­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity and stay­ing the course Ja­maica has pulled it­self out of chal­lenge and is now a more pros­per­ous coun­try. It is true the PNP lost pow­er and is fac­ing the re­al prospect of ten years in op­po­si­tion but the coun­try is bet­ter off for it.

As we have con­sis­tent­ly high­light­ed Ja­maica fea­tures in the top 20 coun­tries in the world for its com­pre­hen­sive cred­it re­port­ing sys­tems and ranks among the best glob­al­ly in the area of start­ing a busi­ness, ac­cord­ing to the World Bank’s 2019 Do­ing Busi­ness re­port. It on­ly takes two pro­ce­dures and three days for an en­tre­pre­neur to start and for­mal­ly op­er­ate a busi­ness.

T&T must im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness not in five years but with a laser type fo­cus, must do so by 2022 .

Even in the midst of the COVID-19 cri­sis, con­struc­tion, of­ten seen as a sig­nal of grow­ing ag­gre­gate de­mand in an econ­o­my has been boom­ing in Ja­maica.A lot of the Ja­maica con­struc­tion is dri­ven by con­fi­dence in the tourism sec­tor, an area of the econ­o­my we con­tin­ue to ig­nore, and it is al­so due to re­mit­tances sent back by Ja­maicans to build hous­es in their land of birth.

Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed, and by ex­ten­sion lo­cal well paid man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs, has to thank Ja­maica for its abil­i­ty to keep its head above wa­ter as it has seen ma­jor ex­ports to the North­ern Caribbean is­land and al­so the ramp­ing up of con­struc­tion in Guyana at a dime of lit­tle ac­tiv­i­ty here in T&T. The roadmap to re­cov­ery com­mit­tee iden­ti­fied con­struc­tion projects as one way of kick-start­ing the econ­o­my and it is hoped that the gov­ern­ment could both ramp-up its own con­struc­tion while at the same time as­sist the pri­vate sec­tor in get­ting the nec­es­sary ap­provals and re­duc­ing the bot­tle­necks to the build­ing process.

This will trick­le down to the many skilled and un­skilled work­ers who are seek­ing to earn a liv­ing in the sec­tor and it will al­so ben­e­fit TCL as well.

To­day is the sec­ond work­ing day for the new ad­min­is­tra­tion and the first Cab­i­net meet­ing. With the chal­lenge of COVID-19 and an en­er­gy sec­tor all but on its knees one hopes that the fresh think­ing will per­me­ate the Cab­i­net room and that there will be in­creased en­er­gy from what is like­ly to be a younger look­ing Cab­i­net.

Dr Row­ley has al­ready promised to tran­si­tion from pol­i­tics and if he lasts the full five years it will be the longest con­sec­u­tive pe­ri­od the PNM has been in pow­er since 1986 and he and his team can blame no one else for this econ­o­my. Per­haps a look to the North may bring about some read­i­ly avail­able so­lu­tions and al­low the Prime Min­is­ter to leave a lega­cy when he re­tires from of­fice.