Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has signalled that his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Administration may not be able to immediately fulfill some of the promises it made during campaigning for the September 3 General Election.

This is in light of the focus now being placed on getting the country back on track in the shortest possible time following the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa on October 28, and the billions of dollars it will take to recover and rebuild.

“As much as possible we’re going to try to keep our commitments from the [Election] Manifesto [but], as I said before, we don’t want to slow down the development of Jamaica as we pursue the recovery and reconstruction,” said Holness on Thursday during a media briefing at Jamaica House where he announced the establishment of multi-stakeholder body that will be in charge of the Melissa reconstruction effort.

The prime minister was asked whether the Administration would be able to keep its election promises, including a commitment to double the National Minimum Wage and a one-off payment of $100,000 to some student loan borrowers.

Responding, Holness said, “There are going to be fiscal choices for the Government, meaning, do I spend the limited resources now on X, or do I spend it on Y? So the general rule would be, if spending on the election promise is not something that is going to yield immediately greater results than spending it on the recovery or on the reconstruction, then we would go for what yields the greater overall results”.

He stated that it was for this reason why a Government is in place, and suggested that such matters are rigorously debated in his Cabinet which he said is made up of fiscal conservatives and others who are more minded to spend on the human concerns and so forth.

“It’s a good balance [in the Cabinet] and we’re going to debate them and I’m sure that there are some things that we won’t do right away and some things that we will continue with. The commitment that we have is to maintain a Government as much as possible, keep moving forward to keep the commitments but if there are tradeoffs to be made, we will make the tradeoff on what is best for growing Jamaica,” said Holness.

Three days before Jamaicans went to the polls the prime minister announced that if re-elected his Government would double the National Minimum Wage from the current $16,000 per week to $32,000 over a number of years.

He said minimum wage would initially be increased by $2,500 to $18,500 in the next fiscal year which begins April 1, 2026.

About a week earlier, Finance Minister Fayval Williams, speaking at the launch of the JLP’s Election Manifesto, announced that, if the party was returned to office, students whose accounts with the Students Loan Bureau are in good standing, will receive a one-off grant of $100,000.

Even if only some of the JLP’s election promises are implemented it will cost the Government billions of dollars at a time when the preliminary estimate of the physical damage from Melissa currently stands at US$8.8 billion.

The country is also losing billions of dollars because of the shutdown of a number of sectors mainly in the south-western section of the island.

— Lynford Simpson