What of JEEP if JDIP funds are depleted?

Mark Wignall

Thursday, January 19, 2012

At just about the time that the JLP administration decided to embark on its worst possible socio-political excess - the Dudus extradition/Manatt affair, crafty politicians in its ranks must have given it more than a thought that the expenditure of Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP) funds could save the JLP from its arrogant self and win it an election.

In the end, sudden as it was, the JDIP funds only provided the JLP government with enough rope to hang its electoral hopes on the gallows of unfolding history.

"I spent about $700 million in my constituency," said a JLP politician to me who had just lost his seat after a hard-fought battle. "In plain political language, I gained more votes from the areas where the roads were not fixed. In the places where the roads were fixed, the people who would normally vote for me refused to vote JLP because, although they got the benefit of a better road network, to them, they didn't 'eat any food' out of the programme."

Last week I had lunch with a winning PNP politician, a first-time MP. In response to my questions on JEEP, the much-vaunted PNP proposal/plan/intention/promise to provide "emergency" jobs by using JDIP funds, he said, "There is nothing left in the JDIP. It is finished. The prime minister is in negotiations with the Chinese. I assume that more funds are being sought."

I thought his answer to be rubbish and asked, "It was supposed to be a five-year programme rolling out in 2010 and going to 2015. How can the funds be depleted a little over a year after it began?"

"Apart from the works that have been completed, in the funds which would have remained, those have been contracted out in other works programmes," he said.

A few days ago I contacted someone in the JLP, an ex-MP. "He is right," he said of the PNP MP. "All the rest of the funds are tied up in forward contracts. There is only about US$9 million left and that is there to cover escalation costs."

A visit to the JDIP website states the following.

"The Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP) represents a major undertaking by the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) to significantly improve the island's road network in order to enhance the quality of life of the citizens of Jamaica, and to stimulate economic development.

"JDIP is the result of an innovative partnership between the GOJ and Government of China and is singly the largest, most comprehensive infrastructural programme to be implemented in Jamaica.

"The Government of China has provided funding through the Export Import (EXIM) Bank of China. This partnership has made available the sum of US$400 million (approximately J$36 billion) for a programme of works to be effected islandwide, on roads and road furniture, such as bridges, drains and traffic systems. The programme will be undertaken on all roads, both main and parochial.

"The programme will be undertaken over a period of five years, commencing in February 2010 (and ending in 2015) and will be implemented by the National Works Agency (NWA), the Executive Agency under the Ministry of Transport and Works."

Under the October 2011 summary of work, I have added up the individual contracts (from October 2010) and the expenditure total is in the region of J$16 billion. Outside of the funds which I am told are there to cover escalation costs (US$9 million), should we assume that $20 billion covers either works executed before the end of 2010 and somehow were not covered in the October 2011 summary, or contracts made after October 2011?

Although former prime minister Andrew Holness had promised an audit of the JDIP after embarrassing breaches had been revealed in an Auditor General's Report, the new PNP minister of transport and works, Omar Davies, recently announced that moves to begin the audit began only after he took office last week.

The present PNP administration has a lot riding on JEEP. When I asked the first-time PNP MP to give me a rough indication of the numbers of people in his constituency who would automatically fit the profile of those who would immediately need the intervention of an emergency programme like JEEP, he said, "About 7,000!"

Assuming that number per constituency, we could be talking about numbers in excess of 400,000 people needing work right at this minute. Even if we break it in half, that is still a staggering 200,000 people.

Certainly, Mrs Simpson Miller must have thought of the likelihood of the JDIP five-year funds being exhausted in contracts when she began to form the idea in her head that JEEP, if it had an engine, would have to be fuelled through JDIP funds.

If the JDIP audit, forensic or no, indicates the general picture that I have painted, it would simply mean that any negotiations with the Chinese would have to involve the creation of a new concept for which new funding would be sought.

Even if new funds were sought and received on the same terms as JDIP, where would our focus be in identifying the source from which these funds would be repaid? And considering that our collective backs would be against the wall in terms of us Jamaicans being seen as too many canines chasing too few bones, would it not place the Chinese in an excessively superior position at which stage they, in negotiations, could demand valuable pieces of Jamaican assets?

Will we be seeing the entire wharf network in Kingston going up for sale any time now? Would the Chinese not be interested in our railroads and see it is a natural extension of satisfying linkages from possession of our transshipment terminal and dock network as they push for added global space and influence in the Western Hemisphere?

Is there any bold, attractive north coast development that the Chinese would be looking at and wanting for a song as they sense our need to immediately satisfy socio-political promises and objectives?

As budget time rolls around this April, I expect that the strong financial institutions (read commercial banks) will be coming under pressure, not necessarily because the new government hates them, but simply because they have done extremely well and reported super profits in a country where too many people are "tiefing" ackee just to eat something.

Let us assume that funds are received from the Chinese, even with onerous terms attached, plus a banking levy to launch JEEP. Could JEEP carry 400,000 souls or 200,000 or 100,000 before it needs more gas?

And for how long?

observemark@gmail.com

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What of JEEP if JDIP funds are depleted?