The first thing to note is that this is not an article on constitutional reform, which is clearly no longer a possibility for this year. Neither is it an implicit call to increase tariffs in Jamaica, which, overall, in my view, are still too high.

It is, however, a call for the strengthening of our social partnership in reaching the goal of economic independence, so ably articulated by Norman Manley in the late 1960s as a goal for the next generation. If we use the Planning Institute of Jamaica’s (PIOJ) 2030 vision, which clearly needs updating, and use 1970 as a benchmark (just after Manley’s observation), by 2030 we will have had 60 years to achieve this, or, arguably, three generations.

At its most recent press conference last week Wednesday, the PIOJ published its short-term growth projections. It outlined impressive reductions in poverty and unemployment and, perhaps more importantly, growth in overall employment and reductions in extreme poverty. However, the most important thing to note is its forecast suggesting that we are returning to our “traditional” rate of growth of 1 to 2 per cent. This is just not good enough.

In what was advertised as his closing speech in Parliament last week, Dr Peter Phillips, in a presentation entitled ‘Lessons from Our History’, which, hopefully, he will expand upon later, sought to provoke the two major political parties into a sense of collective purpose. He argued that, as an independent nation, all of Jamaica’s great accomplishments had been the result of collective endeavours, arguing “nothing highlights this more than our efforts to reduce public debt and achieve sustained economic growth, a task still not achieved”.

Phillips highlighted the role of the “united national effort” due to the shared sacrifice of bondholders, including pension funds, through the national debt exchange (NDX); public sector workers; and the general population, who bore the brunt of increased taxation. He particularly cited the role of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC), which united the private sector, the labour movement, civil society, and state authorities, combined with private sector collaboration on tax reform, and called for a similar “blueprint for growth”, citing what he called the failure of the “5 in 4” model and its economic growth council.

The first point to note is that Dr Phillips is completely correct that the vast majority of Jamaica’s greatest successes have involved a united effort by the different elements of our society. One of the problems Jamaica seems to have in common with most other countries, with the obvious exception of Singapore, is that we seem to require a crisis to do what needs to be done.

The most glaring current example of the damage the lack of a united national effort creates is crime. The lack of similar consensus with EPOC on the economy clearly hampered the impact of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC)-convened and partly European Union-funded Crime Management Oversight Committee (CMOC) effort. There are a number of factors underlying this complex issue, which we will not get into here, but it is nevertheless encouraging to see that the long-awaited fall in the murder rate from 44 per 100,000 in 2015 to a current 24 per 100,000 so far this year has finally occurred. It had spiked as high as 60 per 100,000 in 2017, roughly the same level when Dr Phillips was asked to become minister of national security in the 2000s.

The reasons for the fall in our murder rate need to be carefully evaluated (the Caribbean Policy Research Institute has done some useful work in this area), but the most likely explanation is that the large investments made in all aspects of the police force over the past decade are finally bearing fruit.

These include bringing the police force up to its full complement of 14,000 for the first time in memory, as well as major investments in the areas of intelligence, mobility, technology, training, and even morale. These efforts bring to mind the long ago turnaround in New York from the introduction of the data-driven police management system CompStat under the then Police Commissioner Bill Bratton. It should be noted that a similar approach, using CompStat as a model given New York’s success, was called for as long ago as the early 2000s by the JCC, under its then President Michael Ammar, which also coincided with the second failed attempt at achieving a social partnership, the first being in 1996.

The current new world order, in which old assumptions may no longer hold, requires consensus on a bipartisan growth agenda. The famous “5 in 4” growth target should actually be the goal of both political parties for 2029, and indeed the nation, perhaps as part of a gateway strategy similar to that which was envisaged in the 2003 “partnership for progress”. The latter strategy envisaged Jamaica as a potential third node for the America’s, similar to Ireland in Europe and Singapore in Asia.

One of the key areas of improvement to make such a strategy realistic would be further improvement in what the World Bank calls “trading across borders”, part of which is more simply called Customs. With regards to the latter, it is appropriate to mark the recent passing of the JCC Director Emeritus Lazarus Bucknor, who will be sadly missed for his decades-long efforts to promote private sector collaboration with Customs, notably through joint seminars with the JCC.

Another area would be to build on the 2008 Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which came into full operation in 2023 and needs both of its signatories to place much greater emphasis on investment and other opportunities.

Dr Peter Phillips (Joeph Wellington)

Norman Manley