JAMAICA must pull the informal economy into the mainstream to help ease its huge debt burden, according to a World Bank official.

The World Bank’s representative for Jamaica (along with Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago), Giorgio Valentini, suggested that comprehensive reforms could include an “all-inclusive electronic platform, which does not allow for the survival of illegal/irregular cash-based activities, many of them linked to organised crime”.

“With more of the population accounted for and traceable by electronic means, revenues from taxation should become more robust and the administration of state functions for efficient,” he told the Business Observer. “These savings are likely to be quite significant even before other adjustments take effect.”

The World Bank is rendering technical assistance to the Government as it works through its national debt management strategy, while the multilateral agency see its “primary role as ongoing creative and constructive engagement to identify the most practical and sustainable systemic obstructions to growth”.

“We hope that based on this dialogue and these consultations specific initiatives will emerge through forums, projects and programmes, and with that the identification of any requisite funding… which may or may not be provided by the World Bank,” Valentini said. “One extremely powerful resource that we make available to middle income countries is our expertise in the development, growth and maintenance of Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP).”

Valentini said he is very optimistic about Jamaica’s growth prospects, but he thinks the country now needs to “identify innovative and, where necessary, disruptive opportunities to unlock its latent potential for growth”.

His view of public sector transformation also includes the digitalising all records for a truly paperless administration to forge a model that is truly citizen and business-centric, which he believes can bring with it the significant collateral benefits of thousands of part-time jobs and skills-building for students and otherwise unemployed young citizens.

“This is possible by using an e-Government framework supported by the private sector that, in addition to increase efficiencies and service delivery, it will create new ICT skills and jobs in the government and in the private sector,” Valentini said. “Transitioning to a cashless economy would bring enormous social and economic benefits.

“With all vendors using an electronic point of sale mechanism, the use of cash will be limited, thereby increasing the capillarity of ICT into the system that would, among other things, increase productivity and reduce the levels of risk and often crime associated with the transportation of cash,” he added. “Perhaps most importantly, a cashless economy would facilitate Jamaica’s further integration into the global economy. Based on their predisposition to adapt more rapidly to new technologies, the youth of Jamaica would be key beneficiaries of this move.”