OPPOSITION spokesman on citizen security and productivity Senator Peter Bunting has delivered a stinging criticism of the Andrew Holness-led Government, asserting that it has presided over a plantation type economy that has benefited its friends and cronies to the detriment of the masses.

Bunting also asserted that the economy, which he said is plagued by mismanagement, corruption, and a stubbornly high crime rate, will soon be declared to be in a technical recession. He also mockingly stated that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government was one of acronyms, but said such acronyms will not save it from the electoral storm that is coming, a reference to the general election that’s constitutionally due by September this year.

Bunting made the remarks last Friday in a wide-ranging presentation during his contribution to the 2024/25 State of the Nation Debate in the Senate.

On the economy, he described the prevailing situation as a tale of two Jamaicas. He noted that just two months ago the Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce Senator Aubyn Hill declared that the economy was booming.

“It may be true for the cronies of the ruling party; however, there is a different reality for the rest of Jamaica,” declared Bunting.

He reminded that the World Bank had projected in early 2024 that the Jamaican economy would grow at only half the rate of the rest of the Caribbean over the next two years. He said that since the initial COVID-19 pandemic recovery, the economy has been slowing for eight or nine quarters, stalling in the quarter ending June 2024, before declining by 3.5 per cent in the September quarter.

“While everything is being blamed on [Hurricane] Beryl, the fact is that the trajectory was set two years earlier,” Bunting said, adding that the economy is set to continue its decline in the December 2024 quarter and is projected overall to shrink for calendar year 2024.

“When these projections are confirmed in a couple weeks’ time, the economy will be in what the analysts and the economists call a technical recession, that is two consecutive quarters of negative growth,” said Bunting.

He also pointed to various sectors that he said were in decline, including agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction and tourism. And he said that Jamaica was not doing well as a logistics hub despite the previous People’s National Party Administration having laid the groundwork for its development and expansion.

“I am disappointed to report that in the recently published global container port performance index, Kingston ranks 378th out of 405 ports evaluated by the World Bank. In the subcategory that’s limited to the Caribbean and South America, the port of Kingston is ranked second to last,” he said.

“We rank behind Freeport and Nassau in The Bahamas, we rank behind Bridgetown in Barbados, we rank behind Georgetown, Guyana, we rank behind Castries, St Lucia, and we even rank behind Port-au-Prince in Haiti,” he said.

Regarding the nation’s roads, Bunting described them as being in the “worst condition in living memory”. He also said past-due loans in the banking sector, as published by the Bank of Jamaica, jumped 27 per cent in the third quarter of 2024 when compared with the previous year.

“What that tells us is that both individuals and businesses are struggling to meet their obligations,” he stated.

Bunting also described the education sector as being in a “sorry state” with less than 20 per cent of students passing five subjects, including mathematics and English language.

“The drop-out rate is high, teacher migration is high,” he said while pointing out that some of the country’s best teachers are being recruited by other countries. He said he was not about to share the blame for the state of the sector.

“I will recall that the prime minister, when he was leader of the Opposition… saying ‘don’t tell me about any whole of society problems, it is the Government’s responsibility’. Why else do we elect a Government”.

Bunting also bashed the Government over the state of healthcare, describing most of the facilities as dilapidated.

“Health professionals are overworked and burnt out and patients and their families often feel callously treated by the system as many wait for days and even die waiting in passageways and makeshift wards, sitting in chairs, or lying on benches,” he claimed. He said large sums are being spent but going to waste, mismanagement, and corruption.

Additionally, he described the Cornwall Regional Hospital rehabilitation project as “the marquee example”, highlighting that renovation works were initially budgeted at $1.5 billion but has now ballooned to a staggering $21 billion and counting.

He also claimed health statistics are getting worse, not better, with the country set back decades in some instances, such as in the maternal mortality rate, which, he said, has increased tenfold in south Manchester as noted by the Southern Regional Health Authority. This has moved from 27 per 100,000 live births in 2017 to 273 per 100,000 in 2022.

He lamented that Jamaica’s maternal mortality rate was now significantly higher than the global rate of 223 deaths per 100,000 in a context where Jamaica used to be an example to the rest of the world in maternal and child health.

Declaring that neither performance nor the lives of ordinary Jamaicans seem to matter in the present state of affairs, he charged that “what matters is the friends and cronies of this JLP Administration”.

Bunting also pointed out that “For the first time in our independent history, we cannot complete a proper census”, which he described as “the most basic of exercises — to count how many people in Jamaica and where dem live”.

He noted that the results of a census are critical for planning and policy as it helps to determine where schools and clinics are located, where to deploy social workers and allocate other public resources. He said it was also important for the private sector as, for example, it determines where to locate ATMs.

“This JLP Administration has been operating a plantation style economy — low skill, low wage, low productivity, high job insecurity as contract work predominates. In this environment they bully public sector groups to accept 20 per cent [salary increase] then give themselves 200 per cent,” he said.

“The Jamaican people are demanding that the Government does more to improve their lives, something which this Administration has failed to deliver under conditions of anaemic or no growth.

“Rising income inequality and a stagnant economy threaten governments in both the developed and the developing world. The JLP Government and its leaders will no longer be able to ignore this gathering storm when time come. No umbrella of acronyms — neither SPARK, nor REACH, nor ASPIRE nor SPEED nor even PIVOT — will shelter them from the electoral storm,” he said.