Former Government minister Colin Campbell has berated the current Administration over the just-released Finsac Commission of Enquiry Archives, describing it as “a glorified photocopying exercise” and “a great disservice” to the public, who had expected more from the exercise that cost taxpayers $218.3 million.

“No findings, no conclusions, no recommendations, and Jamaicans are, therefore, left to speculate, conjecture, or otherwise put their own spin on a wildly emotional topic. Journalists from all sides of the spectrum and bloggers, financially literate or not, will be the main protagonists as we head into an orgy of pre-election spin and propaganda,” Campbell, who served as information minister in the previous People’s National Party Government, said in a column published in The Agenda section of today’s Sunday Observer.

The archives were released last Thursday in keeping with a promise made by Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke in March this year to make public all the information gathered by the Finsac Commission during its examination of the circumstances that led to the collapse of financial institutions in the 1990s.

At the time, Clarke, who was opening the 2014/25 budget debate, had announced that the finance ministry will provide grants for academic research to be published, as well as the creation of documentaries on the financial sector collapse “from which future generations can learn”.

He said that the perspectives, on what he termed “a defining period of the Jamaican story”, needed to be made available to the public as soon as is practicably possible.

“We owe it to the victims of that era, to ourselves, and to future generations to do our best to record for posterity the evidence gathered from the commission, make it publicly available, and have it inspire the production of research reports and cultural creative output,” Dr Clarke told the House of Representatives.

Finsac (Financial Sector Adjustment Company) Limited was established by the Government in January 1997 to restore stability after the collapse of several major financial institutions due largely to various factors, including high bank interest rates promulgated by the then Government; excessive spending by large, small, and medium-sized businesses; and a meteoric rise in bad loans at financial institutions.

It is still unclear how much the economy lost during the period; however, experts have put it at approximately $120 billion and about 40 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

In his budget presentation, Clarke outlined the history of the Finsac Commission, from its establishment on January 12, 2009 to its cessation in 2012; its reactivation in June 2016; and up to the point in 2019 when the commissioners, due to the absence of further funding, resigned and turned over the drafts of chapters of a report, along with thousands of pages of transcripts of evidence and submissions placed before the commission, all in electronic form.

He said that when he became minister of finance and the public service in March 2018, there was still no report from the commission, “and given the multiple upward revisions in the estimated cost of producing the report, Cabinet lost confidence in the ability of the commission to actually produce the report within any meaningful time frame and within any reasonable cost”.

“The material gathered by the commission consists of contributions from then government officials; economists; academics; former leaders of failed financial institutions; customers of those institutions, including those who found themselves with ballooning debts; among many other stakeholders,” Clarke said.

He said on publication of the archives the finance ministry will issue a special call “for scholarly research for the purposes of producing scholarly articles, books, and other publications on any or all of the context, causes, consequences, and lessons of the financial sector crisis as well as an assessment of the response”.

The call, he said, will be supported by research grants awarded to research teams which, in aggregate, will not exceed $40 million across multiple research grants.

“These grants will be structured such that a majority of the funds are paid on submission of the final article, book, or scholarly publications,” Clarke explained.

However, last Friday, a day after the release of the archives, Campbell said they are “devoid of the lofty ideals adumbrated by then Finance Minister Audley Shaw” when he announced the establishment of the commission of enquiry.

He also said it is disheartening that many people had genuinely high expectations of the enquiry and had taken the time to prepare and participate, including Dr Omar Davies, who was finance minister during the collapse; former Financial Secretary Shirley Tyndall; and other officials, despite misgivings.

“To have journeyed all the way from 2008 to this unhappy end is a blot on Nigel Clarke’s stewardship,” Campbell argued.

Read Campbell’s column in The Agenda.