THE EDITOR, Sir: Finance Minister Peter Phillips has painted a bleak picture of our economic prospects for the immediate future. He said the fiscal programme of the previous government went “disastrously off-track in the second quarter of the fiscal year”, leaving a fiscal gap of $10 billion.
As a result, he is warning us to brace for “sharp cuts” in the Budget.
In the same breath, Minister Phillips proudly announced that $4 billion was identified for JEEP – their emergency employment programme. I find it difficult to reconcile the two, particularly since revenue collections are well below expectations and many are awaiting the promised abolition of GCT on electricity bills.
limited options
Our economists and other persons of high learning are not providing the Government with much help. Some are saying only that they are “looking to see the kind of adjustments to be made” when they are fully aware that the options there are very limited.
Others, like Dennis Chung, are saying there is need for the Government to “ink a deal with the IMF that is both workable and practical”.
The IMF consists of a relatively small group of technocrats based in Washington who preside over the lives and livelihoods of over a third of the world’s population. Maybe Mr Chung can tell us when the IMF has ever inked a deal that is either ‘workable’ or ‘practical’.
But the big expectation is JEEP. Five days after the last elections, one victorious PNP candidate stated on TV that he had already got 300 calls for JEEP jobs. As forgiving as the people are of the PNP, they are expecting these jobs – soon.
I can think of two jobs programmes in our recent past. In the 1970s, there was the Crash Programme, which was criticised for its poorly managed and unproductive work.
foreign investment
The other initiative, in the 1980s, employed thousands in the garment industry. Unlike the Crash Programme, which was a government-sponsored programme, this involved foreign investors.
It would be helpful to know how long JEEP will last, how many jobs are involved, where the succeeding $4 billion will come from and what we can expect to see at the end of, say, two years.
May I take the opportunity to respectfully recommend the ’80s approach for providing jobs.
It’s not that we don’t want the poor to be able to earn a living but the older, less forgetful among us remember what the ’70s initiative did to the economy of this country. It made all of us poorer.
In the ’80s case, foreign investors were paying wages to workers for real jobs – while increasing our revenues for doing business here. Any money for JEEP is going to come from the cutting and scaling down of previously agreed-on programmes – taking from productive Peter to pay poverty-stricken Paul.
GLENN TUCKER