Vision 2030 Programme Director Peisha Bryan has admitted that data in the hands of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) suggest that the targets benchmarked under the national development plan for the island to reach developed country status “most likely will not be achieved by 2030”.

Responding to questions at the agency’s quarterly media briefing on Wednesday, Bryan, however, said being fixated on timelines was never the intention behind the plan from the inception.

“I put in this proviso, though; when we started the process of long-term national development planning, we, at the time, did an assessment in 2007 that this could be done within 21 years, hence 2030; but the intention was to not be stuck on a timeline but to be stuck on a pathway and a vision for the Jamaica that we all want to live in and experience and what we know we all can achieve,” Bryan told the briefing.

With those targets seemingly further out of sight, Bryan said “the Planning Institute of Jamaica, and I would say the Government of Jamaica, is in the process of looking at what we do beyond 2030”.

“So, for the next fiscal year, we are planning to commence the process of evaluation. We have already started compiling lessons learnt to see what we need to do, what we have learnt from the process, and what do we need to do in terms of moving the country forward,” she explained.

In pledging to keep the media and the country “updated in terms of what is feasible and what can be done in what timeline”, she said strategists will not be revising the goals or outcomes but will be reviewing the targets.

“Currently we are in this discussion, we still need to have those original targets to be able to assess the extent to which we were able to progress towards them over the 21 years as part of assessing our lessons learnt and in developing the medium-term socio-economic framework 2024-2027 which we hope to have finished within a month or two,” Bryan said.

“When the document is completed, those results will be communicated. I will say, though, that for roughly over 60 per cent of our indicators we have largely been on track. We also have been looking at not only the targets in terms of our performance, but also the qualitative data. For innovation, for example, we see in the global qualitative data that Jamaica is performing above countries at similar levels of development, but for us as a country we still feel we are falling short,” Bryan added.

Development Economist Dr Chris Stokes, reacting to the news on Thursday, told the
Jamaica Observer that while “the PIOJ can plan, measure and provide feedback, the achievement of targets around these goals will require monumental national commitment and effort”.

Noting that “the goals and outcomes in Vision 2030 are ambitious and call for overcoming many of the most intractable problems with education, crime, economic growth, poverty, affordable energy“ and others, Dr Stokes said, “in too many areas we seem to be standing still or making too slow progress even over a 20-year time frame”.

“We need to learn from the areas we have done well in — a stable macroeconomy and an enabling business environment — and scale to address all other goals. It is not beyond us, but requires commitment across political administrations and the disciplined execution of strategies over time,” he told the Observer.

The national vision statement, covering 21 fiscal years, 2009 to 2030, is ‘Jamaica, the place of choice to live, work, raise families, and do business.’ The plan is structured around four national goals, 15 national outcomes, 31 sector plans, 84 national strategies, and 75 indicators used to measure the nation’s progress towards developed country status.

Vision 2030 Jamaica is said to be 98 per cent aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which it pre-dates and to which Jamaica is a signatory.

In 2022, the PIOJ explained that the measures may require adjustments based on the global challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine which has resulted in global commodity shocks.

In a media brief on August 18, 2022, PIOJ Director General Dr Wayne Henry described the level of achievement against Vision 2030 targets this way: “Based on the outcome indicator and target framework, the country’s development progress under successive three-year medium-term socio-economic policy frameworks has been mixed.”