Dr Peter Phillips has been crowned the top performing minister of finance in modern Jamaica and the second best overall, by one of Jamaica’s leading political scientist and scholars based overseas.

Provost Emeritus of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and present Executive Director of the King Research Institute at Munroe College in New York, Basil “Bagga” Wilson said that Phillips’ performance in managing the financial affairs of the economy was laudable.

“Dr Peter Phillips has had exceptional education. He has moved from the grass roots to the boardroom and other than Noel Nethersole, he has been the most outstanding minister of finance,” Wilson told the Jamaica Observer while on a recent visit to the island of his birth.

“He has handled the economy quite well and if you look at the years even from the time of the banking crisis that occurred in the 1990s, we really engaged in too much deficit spending, too much borrowing, and I think that under Peter Phillips, the economy has come a long way,” Wilson went on.

The reference to Nethersole, nicknamed “Crab”, stems from the former founding member of the ruling People’s National Party’s stewardship of the economy while he served as the first minister of finance from 1955 until his death from a heart attack in 1959 at age 57.

“Peter would go down in my book as the best finance minister of this era. The thing with “Crab” Nethersole and that Norman Manley generation is that they understood the kind of infrastructure that had to be established in order to create a modern society.

“We have had some serious issues from the 1970s in growing the economy, in adapting to globalisation, there has been some indiscipline in our budgetary process from that time, but I think Peter understands what needs to be done in order to bring the economy to a state where it can begin to grow to such a level where all Jamaicans can benefit from that expansion.

“That kind of discipline was necessary. The Governor of the Bank of Jamaica has also made his contribution. The inflation rate has been coming in lower than what was projected, so that is certainly important in the making of a modern economy and in terms of trying to get the necessary investments, expanding agriculture, expanding agro processing, getting foreign investments in. If your macroeconomic indicators are not solid, are not predictable, then you don’t get that kind of rush of foreign investments to expand the productive capacity of the economy,” Wilson argued.

Phillips, like Wilson a political scientist, became minister of finance and planning in January 2012 and has earned commendation from sections of the global financial community for his ability to maintain economic targets as laid down by multilateral lending agency the International Monetary Fund with which Jamaica has a borrowing arrangement. He also re-established a relationship with the IMF that had collapsed under the previous Jamaica Labour Party administration after then finance minister Audley Shaw refused to sit any of the economic ‘tests’ set by the Fund, claiming that the targets were unrealistic and would hurt the Jamaican economy and its people.

“Peter and his administration are now balancing the budget, which we had not done for more than 40 years and they are now reducing the accumulated debt over the years. So even though the currency has been depreciated over the last couple of years, the discipline that we have been forced to adhere to has put us in a position where we should be in what I would call economic takeoff. We should be able to grow the economy as long as we can get the necessary investments and understand where we sit in the age of globalisation, because that is critical in the sense that we are no longer an island economy,” stated Wilson, a former schoolboy football standout at Kingston College, which he represented in the Manning Cup as a forward from 1959 to 1961.

“As much as we still have economic and domestic production leaving the island, we are part of a larger, globalised economy. And so it becomes important for the business class, the labour community, and the State apparatus to begin to focus and target niches in the export market. That becomes terribly important for our balance of payments, for our productive capabilities and to be able to employ much larger numbers of people within our society.

“There is nothing more damaging to poor people than high interest rates, and thanks to what is taking place in the world economy, vis-à-vis the barrel of oil, things are looking up. The Jamaican economic crisis in the ’70s was triggered by OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and the significant increase in oil produced by OPEC. Oil now is being sold for US$29 a barrel, which has been quite beneficial to the Jamaican economy. One of the things about energy cost is that it has to be factored in if our exports are going to be competitive abroad. So the more we can move away from fossil fuel the better it is for us. There is no question that we need to invest more in solar energy and wind energy and other forms of clean energy that we are preparing to export much more competitive,” Wilson said.

Wilson insisted that one of the major issues confronting Jamaica over the last 40 years is the fact that there has not been robust economic growth.

Now, the present Administration is working at achieving annualised GDP growth of around 2.5 per cent for the present fiscal year, which financial analysts would argue is an improvement of lower, or no growth, but a far cry from the record 13 per cent growth achieved in 1971 under the leadership of then Prime Minister Hugh Shearer.

“In order to maintain social order to reduce the foreign bill, we need to move towards, if not full employment, a much lower level of unemployment. It’s important to bring poor communities into the mainstream of the economy, and the only way we can do that is if the economy is expanding at a robust rate — three, four, five percentage GDP,” Wilson went on.

“One of the things that have been holding back the economy is that the macroeconomic indicators have not been well aligned. I think that we are at a juncture now where the macroeconomics are now aligned in the sense where we have low interest rates, low inflation rate, the reserves are at a fairly decent level, there is a receptivity now to foreign investment in the country, so if you continue on that path things will get better,” stated Wilson.

Nethersole, like Phillips a Jamaica College alumnus, and Rhodes Scholar, was Second Minister to Norman Manley, MP for Central St Andrew, and Vice President of the PNP from 1938 to the time of his death. He has been credited with starting the reform of Jamaica’s financial sector and paving the way for the introduction of the Central Bank —the Bank of Jamaica. His statue stands outside the entrance of the institution located in downtown Kingston.

A solicitor, Nethersole was also the first President of the National Workers’ Union who was an avid sportsman, having captained Jamaica at cricket and earning the nickname ‘Crab’ for his gritty but unattractive way of batting. He was also a member of the Jamaica and West Indies cricket boards and a manager of the Jamaica cricket team.

Phillips was named recently as the Gleaner newspaper’s Man of the Year for 2015, a selection that has been severely criticised by Shaw.