In his soon-to-be-published book, former Opposition Leader Dr Peter Phillips — who served as minister of finance in the Portia Simpson Miller Administration of 2011-2016 — will detail how, on the day he closed the 2013 Budget Debate, he was nervously awaiting word from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that would determine whether he stayed, or was forced to resign as minister.

Phillips said he had to call the IMF to ascertain whether it had approved a funding package for Jamaica. Without the funds, the Simpson Miller-led People’s National Party (PNP) Government would not have been able to fund the budget, the situation was that precarious.

“I said [to the IMF] I have two speeches prepared. I had opened the debate with a promise of external funding from the fund but the board had not yet met, it had been a long drawn out [process],” Phillips recalled on Tuesday in what was seen as his final presentation in the Sectoral Debate titled ‘Lessons from History”.

“I said I can give one; I can close the debate in the normal way. I closed the debate on the Wednesday. I called the [IMF’s] managing director on the Monday; I said, ‘I have two speeches, I can close the debate in the normal way but if the board does not sign off I will be left with no option but to come to Parliament and resign because I can’t finance a budget’,” Phillips, who is battling a serious illness, told the House of Representatives in a rear since he retained the St Andrew East Central seat in the 2020 general election.

“The board agreed on the Tuesday to the programme which enabled me to close the debate in the normal way on the Wednesday, it was that close,” Phillips recounted.

“But the truth is, it was the collective sacrifice made by the Jamaican people up to that point, that had convinced them in Washington, that the whole country was behind the programme,” he explained.

In a near hour-long speech in which he called for the country to unite, and for the two main political parties to collaborate, Phillips recalled the tense negotiations with the IMF which he said rescued the country, the previous programme having been abandoned by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government in 2011, less than a year after it was negotiated.

Despite that, and the often bitter public rhetoric between the two parties, Phillips insisted that Jamaica has achieved great things whenever the JLP and the PNP have worked together. He cited the transformation of the economy, starting when he was finance minister between 2011 and 2016 when both Government and Opposition worked together, as one example.

Emphasising that he was not casting blame, Phillips noted that the 2010 IMF programme, which involved a debt exchange, the divestment of loss-making enterprises, fiscal restraint, and public sector wage restraint, went off the rails the following year. He said he mentioned what was involved to highlight the success of the subsequent IMF programme he was involved with.

“The fact is that while much has been focused on the contribution of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and myself, in my view, we miss the significance of the united national effort that was involved: public sector workers signed up to make the sacrifice; bondholders committed to endure a ‘haircut’ and loss of interest payments (NDX); the general population endured a major tax-burden,” said Phillips.

“Those are the more obvious examples of the unity of effort that was involved,” he said.

In a light-hearted moment, he told the House that he dreaded attending the Parliament during that period as then Opposition Spokesman on Finance, Audley Shaw, “tossed all kinds of epithets [at me]. I was having pangs of fear every time I had to come to the House and announce a further tax package to the country. He called me ‘Pappa Tax’ at the time but it was the requirement of the [IMF] programme.

“In fact, it was a prior condition that we had to close a fiscal gap that was left hanging by the previous administration of two per cent of GDP before they would consider a programme”.

Phillips pleaded for Jamaicans to come together, stating that, “In a time when the world economy is posing tremendous threats to the survival of small countries like ours as we degenerate into a world of normlessness, and an elimination of the rules-based order, it is only this spirit of collective, national resolve that is going to see us through these troubled times”.

He said the then PNP Government took a deliberate decision to engage the population over the IMF conditionalities, “Otherwise they would never understand what the challenges were. It was this willingness to be fully transparent that gave rise to the decision to establish EPOC (Economic Programme Oversight Committee). That was an example not just of oversight, but it unified all the stakeholders,” said Phillips.

The former Opposition leader was diagnosed with colon cancer before Jamaicans went to the polls in the September 2020 General Election in which he led the PNP to a crushing defeat at the hands of the JLP, winning just 14 of the 63 seats in the House.

Since the Parliament convened he has appeared at its sittings sporadically and has indicated that he will not be seeking re-election.