Dear Editor,

“In effect, then, while we have effectively put in place IMF [International Monetary Fund]-inspired ‘economic czars’ to drive the economic growth agenda, a strategy to be publicly supported, we are also desperately in need of ‘social czars’ to keep the bottom from dropping out of democracy ideal.” So said Sir Hilary Beckles in his article ‘Imagining the post-IMF Caribbean economy’ in the Jamaica Observer on November 17, 2017.

There is an echo here of the missing social component of the zones of special operations intervention (except in name). We send in the troops to provide ‘a stable foundation’ for improvement but do little else to actually engender that improvement.

Beckles’ column is a refreshing antidote to the self-congratulatory fawning of Prime Minister Andrew Holness last week as he entertained the IMF’s Christine Lagarde.

Portia Simpson Miller was just the same during Lagarde’s previous visit to the IMF’s ‘poster child’ country.

The IMF must certainly be desperate for examples of their ‘success’, since Jamaica’s growth rate has not improved (still below one per cent) and the debt-to-GDP ratio has fallen only because of the PetroCaribe swap and a more recent change of methodology, each reducing the ratio by about 10 per cent. It was 135 per cent in 2013, down to 115 per cent currently.

Meanwhile, spending on government programmes is severely restrained, compromising not only the promise of economic growth through which the IMF sells its pro-creditor ideology, but also unravelling (as Beckles points out) the social gains, such as they are, since Caribbean independence in the 1960s. We have certainly moved backwards, towards ‘in dependence’, as the late Norman Girvan described it.

So we had the ugly spectacle of Holness using Lagarde to help bully our public sector unions and workers into further submission, having suffered endless wage freezes (cuts in real terms) in recent years. Why not deal instead with the continuing tax avoidance and evasion — not to mention corruption — in high places? Jamaica’s tax arrears, most now uncollectible, amount to 131 per cent of GDP!

Paul Ward

Campaign for Social & Economic Justice

Kingston 7

pgward72@gmail.com