It is fairly well established in the thought processes of the business gurus in academia, the entrepreneurial class and policy makers in government that a number of factors have to be at play in the economy if we are to crawl out from the hole of economic malaise we have been in for close to 50 years.

First, the country needs new money and new ideas for investments or to retool established commercial, service and especially manufacturing entities that can make the link into the global supply chain. Second, there has to be that base for, at the very least, feeding ourselves. In this connection, although farming is thought of as a losing proposition, 50 years ago Jamaica was producing much more per acre in just about every crop than present production.

The emphasis has to be on the matter of soil health, something that both administrations have, for totally unexplainable reasons, ignored since at least the 1990s because politics has always trumped plain good sense. Politicians prefer to hand out free seeds and subsidised fertiliser to their gullible farming community voters instead of telling them that something radical has to be done about addressing soil health. Ask Roger Clarke and Christopher Tufton.

Third, small and medium-sized businesses must be championed in real terms, that is, making capital for start-ups and expansion available at competitive rates along with windows for training in innovations that would not normally be available to these small and eager but very important players in the wider economy.

The fourth aspect is that large companies that impact big on consumers, like JPS, which is most hated by Jamaicans, and telecoms players like Digicel and LIME must begin to roll out not just public relations blitzes but real successes that can be felt in the pockets of consumers. In other words, lower their prices to the consumers.

Having just presented a budget which was at no stage going to be palatable to the people of this country, the PNP administration in 2012 needs more than pockets of political fluff. It has to painfully admit that, notwithstanding our spectacular failures over the last 40 years, when the PNP had its best chance of making a good show (1989 to 2007), whatever it did during that period, the rest of the Caribbean region surged ahead and left us eating their dust.

Today, Trinidad and Barbados, sister countries that have never really been comfortable with us since the rise of Bustamante in pre-independence days, are silently laughing at us as we gaze on at them holding ownership of prime service and manufacturing entities that we were most proud to have. That we almost begged them to take companies like Air Jamaica off our hands have made us a laughing stock in the Caribbean.

LIME and Digicel

Prior to the PNP’s general election win and immediately after it, I was particularly drawn to the Industry, Investment and Commerce Ministry because of its heightened interest in Dr Lloyd Cole’s highly detailed plan/proposal to construct a massive deep-water dry dock at Jackson Bay in Clarendon.

The plan had been far advanced for the last 22 years and although investors in countries like Dubai had shown interest, it needed a government stamp of approval to get past that first, high hurdle. Well, the PNP won, Minister Hylton, like most politicians, has knitted his brows and signalled “intentions”, but it appears to me that the dry dock plan is about to get stuck in the mud of politics because that is the only way we know how to proceed with development. Retard it before it gets off the ground.

In light of this, Minister of Energy, Mining, and Telecommunications Phillip Paulwell must be highly congratulated for being the most proactive minister in the PNP administration. Why do I say this?

Quite apart from his frankness about where we need to move in liberalisation of the electric power generation and distribution grid, he has been most prolific in fully freeing up the telecoms sector from what I saw as a “restrictive freedom” which allowed Digicel, the present leader in the mobile phone market, to use regulation to keep itself at the top, to hold its main competitor, LIME, to a finite spread and, in doing so, to enjoy high mobile rates that would otherwise be lower if real completion was invoked.

People like me who have been quick to pounce on people like Minister Paulwell in the past owe it to ourselves to congratulate him for the work he has done towards bringing call rates down and reducing interconnectivity rates.

I have said this before and I will say it again. Many ministers in many administrations, JLP and PNP, are plain lazy. Conducting ministerial work is tough, involves the links to many contacts and sundry experts and if a minister really wants to make a difference, he will have to have many 20-hour days.

Unfortunately, too many of them are seat warmers and ego trippers while the real workers have to press on even harder to make up for the sloth of those whose only success was to chat the loudest and run first past the post.

I cannot say exactly what it was that got LIME (operating under Digiport International Limited) to give up exclusive contractual rights as the provider of telecoms services to operators inside the Montego Bay Free Zone. The licence would have run to 2015 but under the watch of the minister. LIME has relinquished it in order to give credence fully to its own need to see real liberalisation of the telecoms market.

There may not be much good news for poorer consumers who must now face the reality of paying GCT on tinned mackerel and salt fish. That same consumer, for better or worse, has a cellphone and, like me, we are both looking forward to seeing the downward movement of call rates, something that I have been calling for in this column for well over a year.

Where there is hardly any good news or light at the end of the tunnel, we must welcome more than the thought that pretty soon, mobile rates will begin to tumble downwards!

If we are honest with ourselves, it was LIME that agitated for full liberalisation. At the same time, it took a proactive minister to seal the deal. Where are the rest of them? Sleeping and hiding from constituents?

observemark@gmail.com