Delroy Chuck

The Jamaican economy has certainly failed to perform. With our comparative advan-tage, natural resources and huge labour market, we should be the economic giant of the Caribbean. We were well on our way at the end of the '60s until the socialist revolution of the '70s destroyed everything. Since then, we have gone around in economic circles, and found and manufactured every available excuse for our failures.

Now, a new think tank calling itself Taking Responsibility is about to explain why we failed and/or succeeded over the past decades and, hopefully, set guidelines for future economic success. Yet, it has started out on a wrong footing, seeking more to explain away successes and making excuses for obvious failures. For example, when the Taking Responsibility project argued that the '60s were characterised by the growing gap between the rich and poor, the benefits of growth in the world economy, and that the growth were more dependent on bauxite and tourism, I wondered 'so what', there was growth and that has to be the ultimate aim. In contrast, the '90s had all the benefits of external sources, but instead of benefiting from global growth, our economy slumped and capsized.

Accepting the blame

Taking responsibility must include accepting blame for our failures and acknowledging that we cannot depend primarily on others for our successes. In the global economy, we have to be competitive and produce goods and services that others want and can afford. We need to compete with city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong, where the economic mantra is to produce the cheapest and the best. The Asian tigers and other countries that have succeeded did not start by blaming the rest of the world for their problems - they succeeded by understanding the world economy and found a path to fit in. The sooner we acknowledge that Jamaica has suffered primarily from the failures of economic policy and incompetent political leadership, the earlier we will start to recover and rescue the country from its economic quagmire.

In truth, Jamaica's main problem is that the intellectuals, the socialists and many church leaders spend most of their time bemoaning the unfair distribution of wealth and the suffering of the poor, instead of appreciating that the massive creation of wealth would overcome most of our challenges and shortcomings. If the Taking Responsibility project is to be of any relevance, instead of being another lost cause wasting time and money at the university, it has to focus on how to inspire the entrepreneurial spirit, expand the productive capacity and educate Jamaican business people to compete in the global economy.

China's reinvent wheel

In the capitalist system, there will be an uneven distribution of wealth, but is it better to have an unfair distribution of wealth or a fair distribution of poverty? Under socialism, China discovered that it was distributing poverty, which distribution still continues in North Korea and Cuba. In 1978, the hitherto disgraced Chinese leader Deng Piao proclaimed 'to be rich is glorious' and started the economic expansion in China. Since then, China has invited in every foreign company willing to do business there and has grown by an average of 10 per cent and more annually. That was also the experience of Singapore, where Lee Kuan Yew relied on foreign investors to extricate his poverty stricken city-state to what is now considered a first world economy.

In Jamaica, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. If we want to succeed economically, the way forward is clear. Jamaicans have to create wealth and we do so by the production of goods and services for the benefit and needs of others. If we are to succeed, we must find an easy, open and free path for investors, foreign and local, to invest money and ideas in profitable business ventures, instead of in money market instruments.

Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by email at delchuck@hotmail.com.