Al Edwards, Staff Reporter
IT HAS long been contended that Bruce Golding has the "right stuff" to be a future Prime Minister and that his economic and financial prowess would be best employed for the good of the country.
Now the president of the National Democratic Movement (NDM) is a prince without a kingdom waiting for the call. But what will he inherit and how will he go about returning Jamaica to its former position as the jewel in the Caribbean crown?
The economy has recorded negative growth for four consecutive years and there has been little investment in that time. Mr. Golding points back to the implementation of the economic policy back in 1993 as precipitous of the country's economic woes.
Speaking to Sunday Business Mr. Golding said: "The current economic policy pursued by the Government was founded on the notion that in order to manage the economy you would have to follow an aggressive monetary policy that would mop up the liquidity that you did not want to impact on inflation and on your exchange rate but they did not recognise that by doing so you were creating such a horrendous debt from non-productive purposes.
"That policy can only be used for short periods where you needed to send signals out to the economy or deal with imbalances but ultimately the economic strategy ought to be centred around investment and growth."
Mr. Golding holds firm to the belief that investment and growth should be the central planks of economic policy and are the best ways to deal with both monetary and exchange rate fluctuations. He believes the Government failed to do this and as a result the economy has become worse.
"If you examine the facts, each successive year we have created a bigger burden of debt that absorbs more resources and does so without generating the economic activity that provides you with the revenue to service that debt.
"The recent letter of intent to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) simply indicates how deep into that conundrum we have gone. I think next year is going to get even worse than this one and we should now scrap the focus of the current economic policy," said Mr. Golding.
The traditional sectors of the economy still have a vital role to play. According to Mr. Golding tourism still has enormous potential that hasn't been really exploited. He points out there that there is room in Jamaica for health-related tourism particularly bearing in mind the country's proximity to the United States. He said that eco-tourism can happily co-exist with more traditional tourism but that you can't isolate and insulate it from what is happening in the rest of the economy.
Mr. Golding observed: "The social conditions create violence, violence affects tourism. One of the things I realise is that you can't tackle this problem unless you are willing to re-examine the entire framework under which this country is run. I believe that politics is part of the problem because our political arrangement does not allow us to take the kind of economic decisions that need to be taken because those decisions are not seen as sexy, they are not popular. They are basically hard-nosed decisions that can work against the Government."
So how can the country come out of its current plight? Mr. Golding envisages a period when decisions for the good of Jamaica are taken in the context of a broad covenant where all the players are at the table- where politicians, trade unions and the private sector concede that tough measures will have to be taken.
"Hugh Small talked about adjustment fatigue, in other words this country has been adjusting and adjusting for many years so much so that we are now tired of it. We have wasted the 90s because we made no attempt to build on the successes of the adjustment that preceded it.
"Last year the economy of Trinidad and Tobago grew by seven per cent. Back in the 80s George Chambers (their then Prime Minister) had to take some tough decisions and put the country's interests above politics during the oil crisis. He lost the general election for the first time in the People's National Movement's history, but look at Trinidad's success today."
As far as Mr. Golding is concerned, Jamaica's problems stem from a reluctance to take tough decisions because those tough decisions carry a high political price, and for the sake of the country those decisions will have to be made.
