“Golding proposes prescription for Jamaica’s ills” — the caption appearing on Page 9 of the October 25, 2013 edition of The Daily Observer — could be dismissed by cynics as a case of democracy being “that form of government that ensures the man out of power is always the one with solutions to the problem”. The article reported on the former prime minister’s recent keynote address at the Caribbean International Network lecture series in New York.

The essence of Golding’s thesis is that, as painful and necessary as the current International Monetary Fund (IMF) Extended Fund Facility being implemented by the Government is, it “will not by itself bring about the required economic change”. What then shall we turn to for the nation’s economic salvation?

Golding, in his well-received presentation, dabbled in the usual generalities about the need for reduction in violent crimes, elimination of bureaucracy, reduction of energy cost, improvement of the country’s infrastructure, and increased investments in education and training. According to The Daily Observer article, Golding’s premise is that “the five areas listed are among the binding impediments to the flow of investments to Jamaica”.

Ian Boyne, in his weekly newspaper column, lauds Golding’s sudden enlightenment as if it teaches us something new about how to cure the old disease of Jamaica’s economic malaise. With the inflow of Spanish investments to the tourism sector Jamaica, for a time, rose to near the top in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). A question that should preoccupy our mind is: Why weren’t we able to convert FDI to economic growth? There is plenty of loose talk about the proposed Chinese US$1.5-billion investment in Goat Islands as if it were the panacea for the country’s economic ills. This is building false expectations. We’ve been this way before. The problem is and has for a long time been a trickle down economic model, which fails to empower the base to move from consumption to wealth creation. A graphic depiction of Jamaica’s dilemma will help focus the mind on where the real solution to Jamaica’s social and economic problems lies.

A man living in Flankers, South Side, Majesty Gardens, Tivoli, or any one of our socially and economically excluded communities goes off into a wooded area and returns with a log. Day in and day out he sits chipping and carving away. To the moralising passer-by he appears to be a time waster who could better use his energy searching for the job that does not exist. With the passage of time, the man’s chipping and carving transforms the log to a form bearing human likeness. The snickering and snide remarks stop. No one remembers this man ever entering the gates of Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. By the time he adds the varnishes, he has created a work of art. Yet he is unable to send his children to school. If he travels to a resort area and tries selling the product of his creative genius he is labeled a common hustler and accused of harassing tourists. His stall is smashed and he is driven away like that mongrel dog that everybody kicks, back from whence he came. If he goes into a lending institution seeking a loan to invest in establishing a modest facility to produce the items and train a few boys from the community, he quickly realises that loans are for people who already have money to put up for collateral. So he sits; no longer chipping and carving, but pondering what options he has to provide for himself and his family. The anguish does not inevitably lead to a life of crime,but the link between the two is unmistakable.

This depiction is real for countless numbers of Jamaicans. Data from the Employed Labour Force by Employment Status revealed that the Own Account Worker Category, sole traders, accounted for 33.7 per cent or about 350,000 persons of the total employed labour force in 2005. In that same year, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report ranked Jamaica fourth in terms of participation rate of people in opportunity entrepreneurship and necessity entrepreneurship. Jamaica ranked the highest on another important statistic. The vast majority of equity invested in start-up businesses comes from informal investors themselves, as well as from family and friends. Undercapitalised, and without technical and other forms of assistance, no wonder most are reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence. Like the man in the story above, many eventually give up, disappear into the underground economy or turn to something worse. The disastrous consequences of the situation for national economic development and social peace were powerfully highlighted by the late president of the United States John F Kennedy in his inauguration address. “If a free society cannot help the many poor who are struggling to succeed, it cannot protect the few who are comfortably rich.”

There is no concerted effort being made in our country toward using entrepreneurship as a tool for development and growth. This may soon change. On December 21, 2012 Jamaica became a signatory to an Israeli-sponsored United Nation’s resolution: Entrepreneurship for Development. In general, the resolution “emphasises the need for improved regulatory environments and policy initiatives that promote entrepreneurship and foster small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as microenterprises, and stresses the positive role entrepreneurship plays in driving job creation and expanding opportunities for all”. Financing is vital to meaningful participation by persons at the base of the economic pyramid in entrepreneurship. The resolution “encourages member states to expand alternative sources of financing and diversify the retail financial services system to include non-traditional providers of financial services, such as microcredit and microfinance”. Significant to Jamaica, the resolution emphasises the need for “national efforts aimed at bringing informal workers into the formal economy”.

Trench Town Trade and Investment Fair

The inaugural Trench Town Trade and Investment Fair, which culminates with an all-day expo in Emancipation Park on November 16, is a first step in a long journey toward transforming zones of social and economic exclusion to zones of investment and opportunity. Organised under the theme, “Transforming communities through wealth creation”, the purpose of the event is to bring community-based producers of goods and services out of the shadows into the mainstream of the economy where they can benefit from public policy and their contribution can be counted. Such a historic event is deserving of the support of Government, the private sector, the development and non-government sectors, and the general public. The event not only represents a new paradigm of economic development at the community and national level. It may be Jamaica’s only realistic chance of creating growth in a period of economic contraction and austerity.