PRIME Minister Andrew Holness has warned the nation against any return to the days of the “poor management” of the Jamaican economy.

The prime minister also blamed people, whom he suggested, had utilised connections to the People’s National Party’s (PNP) 1990s Administration, and benefited from policies which served to hurt the masses and are now representing themselves as financial wizards and experts on how the economy should operate.

Holness was speaking last Wednesday at the launch of the Amber/UTech Launchpad at the University of Technology (UTech), Jamaica.

The Amber/UTech Launchpad is a collaborative effort between the Amber Group and UTech designed to strengthen the growth and development of techno start-ups within Jamaica, with the objective of nurturing and advancing entrepreneurial ventures, and aims to facilitate the establishment and growth of 100 businesses within a span of 1,000 days.

According to the prime minister, it is more important that, in particular younger generations of Jamaicans, appreciate what transpired in the financial sector in those years to assist them in properly assessing comments being made by some stakeholders about how the economy should be governed.

“Between January 1983 and March 2010, that’s 27 years ago, the Bank of Jamaica’s three months treasury bill yield was in double digit, meaning that it was higher than 10 per cent. The worst period of this very high interest rate policy was the period between June 1990 and August 1999, when the T-bill yield was in excess of 20 per cent for the entire period, and it went as high as 50 per cent in May 1992,” Holness noted.

He said that the essence of what he was saying dates back to the 1990s, “when some bank operators, investment houses or securities dealers, if they were in any way minded to do investments, they did not have to think up of a new product, a new app, they didn’t have to innovate, [as] all they needed to do was to take the little money that they had and they say invest. But that’s not what they were doing, that’s not investing. They just lent it to the Government and benefited from the high interest rate policy at the time, which hurt several businesses.

“Some of the people that we have today who claim to be financial gurus, to be some wizard of economic innovation and ingenuity, that’s what they came out of, including those who pontificate today about how an economy should be run and how they have a better perspective on how an economy must be run,” he added.

Holness told outspoken public commentator and former Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) President Howard Mitchell, who was in attendance at the function, to take note of the history of some of the current critics of the Government’s management of the economy.

“I just thought I would put that into context. So the next time you speak, Howard, you can speak on that and speak on it powerfully as you speak on other things,” he stated, earning a chuckle from sections of the audience at the UTech Auditorium who were being introduced through the partnership between the Amber Group and UTech to discuss the joint launch pad.

Holness recalled in the 1990s Jamaica had an inflation rate of 77 per cent in one year.

“Recently, there was quarreller just after the pandemic where we went up as high as 12 per cent, and we are now at about five or six per cent: We are hovering somewhere there. Where we are coming from as a country though is 77 per cent inflation in one year, under the Government of the people who would want to tell this Administration how to manage inflation,” he went on.

The PM said that the Government, itself, during the 1990s, “was borrowing and crowding out private sector investment”.

“Essentially, what it meant was that the private sector couldn’t get funds at a lower manageable rate, because they had to be competing with the government that was just borrowing,” he recalled.

Dushyant Savadia, founder and CEO of the three-year-old locally based Amber Group, said the company has AI-powered innovative vehicle tracking, telematics and fleet management technology solution creating a better connected vehicle experience.

He described Amber as a multi-stacked, agile, software development company that provides customised leading edge, sustainable technology solutions, plus a QR code and app-based merchant to customer, cashless, cardless payment solution that allows payment processing via a smartphone or a tablet. A fully digitalised gas station-refuelling solution, which revolutionises fuel retail administration and customer service delivery, is also available.