AFTER a debate which delivered less than it promised on Tuesday, Jamaicans will be expecting more when two of the island’s sharpest economic minds, Minister of Finance Dr Nigel Clarke and Opposition spokesman on finance Mark Golding square off today in the second of three National Political Debates, in the lead-up to the September 3 General Election.

Clarke, representing the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and Golding, representing the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), had some exciting clashes in Parliament while they both served in the Upper House. These have intensified in the Lower House since 2018 when Clarke was appointed finance minister.

While there are no major differences in their economic ideology the implementation has been the big difference, and that should provide the fireworks tonight.

The two are expected to clash over the rate of growth in the economy, the recent slide in the value of the Jamaican dollar, the financing of the many projects both parties have proposed in their recently released manifestos, among many other issues in the 90-minute debate.

Clarke will start with a slight advantage having held the nation’s purse strings over the past two years and steered a somewhat successful fiscal course so far through the COVID-19 pandemic.

He has staked the JLP’s performance on four pillars: fiscal sustainability, with debt under a firm downward trajectory; external sustainability, with sufficient reserves in the central bank to provide a buffer against unexpected external shocks; price stability, with five years of low, stable, and predictable inflation; and financial stability, with reserves in our banks that are adequate and a banking system that is properly capitalised.

“These four pillars together provide the foundation of macro-economic stability. We have never before experienced all four of these critical pillars at the same time – not in the 1970s, not in the 1980s, not in the 1990s and not in the 2000s.

“Today, however… we are finally experiencing the critical macro-economic stability that has so painfully eluded us for far too long,” declared Clarke as he opened the 2020-2021 Budget Debate.

“With a strong platform of macro-economic stability, Jamaica is moving in the right direction. To be sure, vulnerabilities remain due in part, to [the] debt that remains high. But the stability we have achieved is hard earned and so it is our duty… to preserve, institutionalise, and protect our collective achievement of hitherto elusive macroeconomic stability,” argued Clarke.

In his response, Golding argued that when the Andrew Holness Administration was voted into office in 2016 the burden of structural reforms had already been largely accomplished by the work of the previous PNP Administration.

According to Golding, the macroeconomic situation had been miraculously turned around through great national sacrifice and Jamaica was poised for a new era of high levels of economic growth.

“We had done the planting, and they came to office on a promise to reap prosperity. The entire country expected that this promise of prosperity would have been kept, and who could blame them for expecting this?

“After all, this Government had inherited from the PNP a stable and improving macroeconomic situation. The fiscal accounts were steadily improving, the primary surplus target had been met over several successive years, the public debt was rapidly declining, Jamaica’s net international reserves were steadily growing, [and] unemployment and poverty were both falling,” argued Golding in his contribution to the 2020-2021 Budget Debate.

The clash of the two economic heavyweights should be worth going miles to see, and if Jamaicans struggled to determine a winner of the team debate on social issues on Tuesday then this one could be even more difficult to score.

The National Political Debates, organised by the Jamaica Debates Commission, will close on Saturday when JLP leader, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, and PNP president, Opposition Leader Dr Peter Phillips clash.