In 1976, my then wife and I walked into a little appliance store on Orange Street and purchased a brand new 10 cu ft Servewell ‘frost-free’ refrigerator for all of $350 cash!

I was doing fairly well that year and in that era, and the cash purchase represented that fact coupled with the satisfaction I felt in knowing that I had purchased a Jamaican-manufactured product.

Of course, I was younger and more the radical idealist who had become infected with the PNP’s Michael Manley-brand of politics. The way I saw it, as long as my household could live well and those in the lower social strata could gain more balance in economic equity, all was OK.

Then, Manley’s political dominance was OK for me too, just as long as he could gain consensus among the ideological factions in his party/Government pulling him on either side of the capitalist mode of production — what some of them saw as an ideology in itself.

At that time, local manufacturing employed over 100,000 people and represented about 25 per cent of GDP as against the 75,000 it now employs who produce seven per cent of national output. But it was tentative, as a new breed of organised gun criminality intertwined with our political tribalism and class ‘warfare’ made many run off and highlighted the worst period (1974-1980) of our economic decline.

It seems that, between the ideological experiments of Michael Manley and the perennial hostility of the governmental machinery towards business (the many layers of regulation), we have spat in the face of Robert Lightbourne and the men of the past who gave Jamaica its early start in manufacturing.

In the 1970s, it was less a consideration of monetary policy and more ideology that shook the base of economic activity in this country.

In the 1990s, that changed, and it made manufacturing sheer financial torture as it was a much better bet to shutter the doors, send home the workers to fret, use whatever cash one had to invest in mega-earning government paper, comb the beach with the girlfriend and the dividends, divorce the wife, get fat and drunk, and blow smoke in the face of those who would have to later pay for the incompetence of those disastrous PNP policy directions — the poorest among us.

That said, if we are brutally honest, had our manufacturing class laboured less on the inefficiencies of the past, in which real competition was less of a threat to it and had begun to engineer itself into the global supply chain, the present ‘Buy Jamaica’ campaign would not now be having the effect as it has come across to us — ‘buy Jamaica or we die’.

In other words, at all times, it is ideal that the local population will want to purchase its local products, but if the export market was healthier, or just healthy, the cry would not be as desperate as it is now.

All well-thinking Jamaicans would want to support the Jamaica Manufacturers’ Association’s (JMA’s) Brian Pengelley in his aim to create 30,000 jobs in the next two years in the manufacturing sector. While some have begun to pour champagne, it ought to be stated that the manufacturing sector is aiming at a target that it wants to hit.

It can only hit that target if the Jamaican market supports it.

If we read carefully into what Mr Pengelley said, the proviso of local support is the main driver of meeting the objective of 30,000 new jobs in two years. For this reason, he did not want to commit the JMA to giving sector breakdown of the 30,000 ‘new jobs’ as in ICT, chemicals and cosmetics, electrical, food and agro, furniture and bedding, minerals and metals, printing, packaging and paper, textiles, etc.

There is, of course, the other side of the coin, the unpleasant side that must be faced, accepted and dealt with urgently.

Whenever Chupski goes to the supermarket and takes up a five pound bag of Idaho potatoes, she does it because it is cheaper that five pounds of potatoes grown at home in Christiana. In 2008 when we both walked into one of our main furniture stores and I stupidly insisted on her buying local in purchasing a dresser (which I never use), I did it because of my nationalistic bent.

A year later when the baseboard at the front began to sag in the centre, I called and the company sent over the local manufacturer. He eventually took back the dresser and replaced it with one having a sturdier baseboard. Weeks after, the metal runners began to fall out because, while there were options to utilise up to six screws per runner, only two each were used, and even those were not tightened. The drawers were rattling! Horrible work in finishing and total slackness! Chupski had an ‘I told you so’ moment.

Plus, that turned off from ‘Jamaican-made’ furniture and from that particular store.

This cannot assist the few good quality manufacturers of furniture locally, thus it is imperative that they advertise more instead of us searching hard to find them.

For years I have liked the Excelsior brand of biscuits, but when I gaze at the flip side of the packet it says ‘Made in Trinidad for the Jamaican Biscuit Company.’ I am not sure exactly what that really means so, in my confusion I prefer to purchase National sandwich cookies, made right here at home.

I will take a bet and bank on the likelihood that our Jamaican men are more ‘nationalistic’ than our women, simply because our women are more the pragmatists.

When I say to Chupski, ‘Honey, let us buy this one; it’s Jamaican,’ her first response is, ‘Which one is cheaper?’

As much as we would like to embrace ‘new’ technology, not many of our business entities have workable websites. Cost may be a problem, plus knowing that Internet penetration has not reached to that tipping point to make the start-up and maintenance spend on a website viable.

A few years ago, I was taken on a tour of Wisynco’s manufacturing facilities and its huge 100,000 sq ft warehouse at Whitemarl on the outskirts of Spanish Town. It was a most impressive mix of local manufacturing and distribution. Lascelles Chin of Lasco, the ‘everyman’s friend’ of manufacturing in Jamaica, must be mentioned here too as one whose companies have made locally manufactured/packaged goods affordable to the poorest in the population.

The tough reality is, we live in a globally packaged space and merely appealing to our nationalistic sides will not do it. Quality of product and packaging must be acceptable, and pricing must be competitive. The problematic customer service and, in some cases, non-existent after-sales service must be tackled.

As Chupski said to me while I was ‘writing out aloud’, “It is not a matter of buying local or not doing so. Times are tight and we women are simply looking for the best deal to make the money last longer.”

observemark@gmail.com

PENGELLEY… aims to create 30,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector in the next two years