Civil society groups as well as Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke agree that amendments should be made to the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to improve participatory budgeting in Jamaica.

Speaking at a recent Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal (JAMP) forum, Clarke said, “I think we have some way to go in the public education probably before we spring board into this [participatory budgeting]. If we were to start this, and this is my individual view, we should start with what we have that most closely resembles a participatory process, with adequate safe guards and protection from being dominated by the most organised.”

The minister was referring to the CDF which he believes is a segment of the overall budgeting process which allows citizens to have direct influence over how funds are allocated.

“We do have participatory budgeting in Jamaica, generally defined, in that we are a democratic country and that persons who formulate and drive policy are actually elected officials. However, it’s more of an indirect route rather than directly. I would say that we have a lived experiment with participatory budgeting or something that could involve participatory budgeting in Jamaica which is the CDF.”

The CDF seeks to improve the effectiveness of Members of Parliament as a designated funding mechanism for constituency projects. The main thrust of the fund is to promote human and infrastructure development at the community and constituency levels through the establishment of sustainable development projects.

However, executive director of JAMP Jeanette Calder contends that the CDF isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.

“Even at the CDF level the rules are not being followed. For example, parliamentarians are not really supposed to have access to the CDF money according to the policy, unless they have met with their constituents. So just by enforcing the existing rules we could increase participatory engagement since it would limit their access to the funds,” said Calder.

Clarke agreed, admitting that the CDF isn’t working the way it should right now.

“Can we first get the Constituency Development Fund to work in a way that people can become less sceptical? Because what you’d find is that the same concerns you have with the CDF could emerge if we tried to approach another segment of funds to be used directly,” he advised.

He suggested reforms to the CDF to make participation more of a priority going forward.

“The CDF is an example, though not a full blown example, of participatory budgeting, meaning that there would have to be companion mechanisms formed. But it at least bears some of the hallmarks of what could be a participatory process, and if the closest, the easiest way to making participatory budgeting a reality in Jamaica is to take what we have that’s closest to it and put it through some serious amendments,” he stated.

However, he argued that despite efforts to get more Jamaicans participating in the budget process, few are actually interested in it.

“Two years ago, we launched with the IDB, a tool that makes the capital budget open to scrutiny. Where you can go on a website, you can pick a project in an parish across the ministry, click a button, see what the budgetary expenditures were, see how much has been spent to date, see who the contractors are, post pictures of the project, and participate in the execution of the national budget. I haven’t seen where that has been used and taken up apart from the most organised groups,” the minister argued.

In the meantime, Calder stressed that a part of what needs to happen is citizen empowerment to engage with government on controversial policies.

“We need something formal between citizens and government not only to plan, formulate and approve but to allow citizens to be involved throughout the entire process during spending and the oversight to make sure that we kick-off this model of participation. So it usually starts with the citizens being dissatisfied about government spending, and really inserting themselves into the government process, seeing that, that insertion model worked meaning interacting with government, and then formalising that into some sort of policy. The citizens are the employers, we are the checks and balance. We provide the funds, they are for our benefit, and it is a little bit disturbing that after 60 years in 2022 we are still relatively clueless about how our money is utilised, where it flows and under what conditions,” she argued.

In any event, the finance minister maintained that full citizen participation at the national level will not be possible.

“Participatory budgeting in all of the places I have seen in Brazil and Mexico, Netherlands and New York, it involves a small fraction of the budget and in some cases just a small fraction of the local budget that is made available to be allocated in a participatory way. It would be completely chaotic otherwise and participation couldn’t work for the full national budget of 800 billion dollars, but it is possible that we could allocate a portion, small amounts, relative to that on the local level to be allocated in participatory ways,” Clarke informed.