The following is a lightly edited version of the response presentation after being conferred with a honorary doctorate at the 2025 Commencement Ceremony of University of the Commonwealth Caribbean (UCC) on July 20, 2025:

Please permit me first of all to express my deep appreciation for the honour that you have conferred on me today. I accept it in all humility on behalf of all those who, by their efforts and their sacrifices, have over the past decade contributed to the change in Jamaica’s fiscal trajectory and to the establishment of fiscal stability in this beloved country of ours.

Above all, as I have said before, our greatest accomplishments as a nation have been the result of collective efforts. While I may have had a central and coordinating role in the country’s efforts to correct its fiscal imbalances, we should also recall the tremendous sacrifices made by the public sector workers, who voluntarily endured extended wage-freezes; and by pensioners and other holders of Jamaican bonds, who took “haircuts” giving up interest income; and, of course, the hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who endured major tax increases in order to restore credibility to the country’s fiscal affairs.

Equally deserving of accolades are the staff of the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Jamaica, as well as the Members of Parliament and the Cabinet led by the Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

On a personal level, I would like to pay tribute to my wife Sandra and to my family and friends who offered me support and encouragement as we confronted the difficult decisions and tasks involved in staying the course of fiscal prudence.

It is, in my view, a testament to the political maturity of the country that subsequent political administrations have remained committed to fiscal prudence.

Even so, despite this very real success, Jamaica and the Caribbean are facing real crisis. Recent shifts in the global trading system resulting from the blow delivered to the multilateral trading system, which has raised effective tariff rates and reduced the growth prospects for the world economy.

When considered alongside the generalised assaults on multi-lateralism, as embodied by the United Nations and the affiliated institutions like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO, etc, as well as the decline in resources available for development assistance from the major powers, it is clear that notions of a global development agenda, which took root after World War II, have been severely curtailed, if not extinguished entirely.

To put it plainly, Jamaica is facing the most hostile international environment it has faced since Independence.

And, to compound the challenges that this entails, we have not experienced any significant level of economic growth despite the consolidation of our fiscal stability.

Recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysis finds “that most Caribbean economies had slower growth over the last two decades as compared to previous decades.

Unfortunately, in Jamaica’s case there has been no appreciable growth over the past five decades, as compared with the phenomenal growth levels of 5 per cent and 6 per cent per annum experienced in the 1950s and 1960s.

In this context, the very survival of the Caribbean Dream of successful independent nationhood, nurtured by the founding fathers and mothers of our nation is in danger. Slow growth, or no growth, hinders the improvement of the living standards of our people and stifles their aspirations. It casts doubt on the efficacy of our national institutions, including the governance institutions, and ultimately will bring into question the viability of nationhood itself.

We are indeed facing a national emergency. We need to mobilise all our resources as a people to confront it. This goes beyond any political or social division that we may have.

We must marshal our best and most experienced intellectual and managerial resources in some Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC)-like entity and work on a national growth plan and then systematically implement it.

I am hopeful, because our experience in reducing the public debt has shown that we can achieve common cause in the national good when it matters.

Dr Peter Phillips is former leader of the Opposition and president of the People’s National Party.

There has been no appreciable growth over the past five decades, as compared with the phenomenal growth levels of 5 per cent and 6 per cent per annum experienced in the 1950s and 1960s.

There has been no appreciable growth over the past five decades, as compared with the phenomenal growth levels of 5 per cent and 6 per cent per annum experienced in the 1950s and 1960s.