Editorial | Vision 2050 and beyond

The aspiration of making Jamaica “the place of choice” for its citizens to “live, work, raise families, and do business” remains relevant. There are still four years in the two-decade timeframe since the launch of Vision 2030 for their achievement.

But that ambition rests on a framework of policy expectations. However, in the 17 years since they were established, the global environment in which they were framed has shifted unalterably – at a pace that Jamaica has been unable to match.

In other words, the world in which, and for which, the mechanisms underlying Vision 2030 were framed no longer exist. It is in that context that if they have not yet started, Jamaica’s policymakers should begin work on a new 20-30-year vision and executing agenda.

This time, though, the political executive, beyond their embrace of the slogan, must assume greater ownership of the updated vision and the processes for its execution.

There is no claim that there have not been significant achievements since the launch of Vision 2030 in the midst of the global financial crisis that helped to propel Jamaica to the edge of a fiscal precipice and locked it out of international financial markets. Over the last 13 years, Jamaica has achieved substantial macroeconomic stability. Until Hurricane Melissa’s destructive intervention in October, it had more than halved its debt, as a proportion of GDP, to 62 per cent. Unemployment has declined dramatically to historic lows, and crime, especially murders, though still high, has fallen sharply.

The unemployment trend notwithstanding, economic growth has remained low, and the island’s productivity continues to decline. Additionally, educational outcomes remain poor, weakening Jamaica’s capacity for competitiveness in an increasingly technology-driven global economy.

OTHER CHALLENGES

These problems are being exacerbated by other challenges that are expanding at a rapid pace. In the last year, for instance, Donald Trump’s re-emergence as America’s president has accelerated changes in the accustomed international order, resetting global trading and geopolitical relations. The climate crisis has added to these issues.

For instance, Mr Trump’s tariff policies, and use of access to the US market as a national security cudgel, have stressed supply chains established in the age of economic globalisation. This has given impetus to the concepts of ‘friend-shoring’ and ‘home-shoring’ and trading blocs.

In this emerging global environment, with small countries being squeezed by Great Power competition, Jamaica will have to compete in global markets where entry is no longer primarily defined by price competitiveness and standardised tariffs but restrictive technical rules and geopolitical alignments.

In this new environment, in addition to the geopolitical obstacles, Jamaica will have, for instance, to meet increasingly rigid sanitary and phytosanitary conditions in the European Union and other markets. Compliance will demand not only laboratory certification of products but supply chain and production traceability to ensure, among other things, conformity with carbon and labour standards.

Domestically, this will demand digital information and data management, which has implications for education and training. The new circumstances will also call for greater investment in renewable energy in part as a response to the climate crisis as well to help satisfy energy needs from domestic sources. Jamaica will also have to meet the decarbonisation requirements for access to foreign markets.

REDUCTION IN CRIME

Even as they respond to the unstable external environment, domestically, policymakers will have to lock in a sustained reduction in crime and deliver on all the other services to make citizens feel Jamaica is the premier place to live, work, do business, and raise their families – or whatever formulation embraces these ideals.

What is obvious is that these goals can’t be achieved, within a reasonable timeframe, with the consistent meagre economic growth – around one per cent per annum – that Jamaica has managed over most of the past half-century. At two per cent growth a year, closer to the norm in recent times, it would take 35 years for the size of the Jamaican economy to double and bring its per capita GDP closer to most of its smaller Eastern Caribbean partners in the Caribbean Community.

Jamaica’s slow economic growth has happened despite the Government’s fiscal produce and macrostability – and the assumption that once these things were in place, robust economic activity would follow.

The histories of most emerging and newly emerged economies have shown that this generally isn’t the case. The State, working in tandem with the private sector and clear and targeted partnership, has shown to be a viable option in meeting developmental goals. Indeed, Hurricane Melissa badly exposed the consequence of the hollowing of the Jamaican state in recent decades in the inability of the Government to have quickly, robustly, and adequately responded to the ravages.

The bottom line is that in crafting a new vision for Jamaica’s advancement, a critical change must be an advance of its ownership from the technicians who craft its formulations to its internationalisation of those who, ultimately, are accountable for policy: the political executive.

Further, a vision, and its underlying policies, can’t be on autopilot in the hope that the market will appropriately, and quickly, respond to market signals. At times, the hand of the State is necessary to nudge things along.