Martin Henry
THERE, WE have it from the horse's mouth. And Dr. Wesley Hughes, longest serving director-general of the Planning Institute of Jamaica, is a horse of some pedigree in the management of the Jamaican economy.
The Jamaican economy could achieve double-digit growth based on current trends if crime were managed and brought under control. This was the centerpiece of the PIOJ boss's speech to the Life of Jamaica investment seminar on pension funds a couple of weeks ago.
Dr. Hughes was speaking on the very day when the government started to deploy the army in current hot spots like August Town, the Bryden/Bray streets area of East Kingston and Spanish Town.
Hughes has picked up some strong private sector support for his assessment that the Jamaican economy is fundamentally stronger, better regulated, more open and more efficient and in a better position to meet global challenges after 20 years of reform.
Richard Byles, president and CEO of insurance giant LOJ, told Kingston Rotarians last Thursday that Jamaica is entering its most favourable period for economic growth for 40 years with levels of investment unprecedented since the bauxite boom of the 1960s.
CONTROLLING CRIME
But Hughes' prognostication comes with a big if: "If we can just deal with the crime problem."
The man who heads the Jamaica Exporters' Association, Dr. Andre Gordon, from where he sits is warning that Jamaica will never achieve sustainable prosperity as long as crime remains out of control and the justice system does not work.
Economic activity in the most violence-prone communities has long ago shrunk mostly to street level hustling as businesses have pulled down their shutters and fled.
A profile map of the degradation of public infrastructure and the decline of business in widening swathes of urban Jamaica would have serious shock value and should be done. But that would be only part of the picture, the visible part. The hidden psychological impact of crime on economic activity is greater.
Obviously, there are several other factors influencing economic growth. Patrick Rousseau, writing to the Financial Gleaner last Thursday, felt crime may be a contributing factor to the lack of economic growth, but the biggest factor is the Government bureaucracy which bogs down everything.
But crime at the level at which this country is experiencing it must be a major deterrent to new investments and a significant cost to established businesses.
A number of efforts have been made to quantify the impact of crime on the economy including a fairly recent study by Professor Al Francis and colleagues at the UWI. The Al Francis study on crime and the economy indicated that while increasing the level of real income through economic growth may reduce robbery it would have no effect on murder, shooting, rape and carnal abuse.
THE STATE'S RESPONSIBILITY
While the government at the level of political leadership keeps making projections of low single-digit growth as some major achievement, a public servant with his finger on the data is postulating that double-digit growth is possible if the state carries out its primary responsibility.
We have grown so accustomed to thinking of the government as principal economic manager and social services provider that we may overlook that the most fundamental function of government, in fact the reason for government in the first place is the security of the state and the maintenance of law and order.
What the head of the PIOJ is, in fact, acknowledging publicly is that the failure of the government to carry out its most basic responsibility is frustrating all its other plans for growth and development.
The 20-year-long sacrifices for macro-economic stability and to escape the 'crisis mode' of managing the economy, which formed the basis of Dr. Hughes' optimism, cannot bear the fruits expected if the crime monster is not defeated.
Even the greater investment in education which Dr. Hughes is pushing as a key stimulus for achieving double-digit economic growth will fail to deliver without taming crime. Recent news coverage of the effects of violence on schools and children in East Kingston is just one small documentation of the effects of crime on education. Among skilled professionals, educated largely at state expense, escaping a crime-ridden society is perhaps now as important a migration factor as seeking better economic opportunities.
The strategy has to be crime control for economic growth; not economic growth for crime control. First things first.
Martin Henry is a communications specialist.
