PNP Manifesto - sober, hopeful

The People's National Party (PNP), in its election manifesto, has brought to the table a set of economic proposals which are at once promising, hopeful, challenging, and balanced.

G2K is absolutely right that much of the content of the manifesto demonstrates continuity with Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) policies and thrust, which is a good thing for the country because it shows the maturity of our political parties in recognising that there is very little space for policy excursion. There is no virtue in novelty just to feign difference as a vote-catching device. The PNP itself, to its credit, acknowledges early in its manifesto: "The PNP is mindful of the economic challenges and recognises that there will be limited options within which to manoeuvre." This is the kind of honesty we need from political parties.

Indeed, the PNP, in its manifesto, accepts the economic reform agenda of the JLP (and The Gleaner). It says it believes that "tax reform is of paramount importance to fiscal sustainability", and "we recognise the urgent need for public-sector pension reform, given the unsustainable burden of pension obligations on the Budget". The PNP levels with the Jamaican people that it "fully acknow-ledges that there is no easy solution for resolving the economic crisis. There are limited options".

JOB CREATION BY STATE

The PNP accepts the necessity of macroeconomic stability, but it goes further by advocating a more activist state than the JLP allows in its neoliberal model. In its section on 'Job Creation', the manifesto says: "The private sector is laying off staff and cannot be expected to provide the number of jobs needed. We are of the view that doing nothing is not an option ... ."

In this the PNP has staked out a major difference in economic philosophy with the JLP. In my view, this is the debate we need to have - and beyond this election. Let us have a serious intellectual, not partisan, debate on the best strategies for economic development.

The JLP has made it clear that its economic philosophy is that Government should set the policy framework, create macroeconomic stability and leave the private sector to create jobs and grow the economy. The PNP, in its manifesto, rejects this minimalist role of the State, while not advocating any statist approach to development.

The PNP's proposal to negotiate the use of 25 per cent of the funds from the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP) to channel into labour-intensive infrastructure projects, such as constructing retaining walls, paving gullies and reforestation (which could seem like a revamped crash programme) is not the most promising of its proposals. Most people will not spend the time to read this approximately 70-page document, so they will miss some of the more potentially useful proposals, such as the establishment of the Jamaica 50 Growth and Development Fund, which would provide venture capital, collateral support and capacity building for entrepreneurs, "aimed at facilitating the conversion and transformation of creative ideas into innovative products and services". This would be funded by private debt and equity sources.

Then there is the proposal for a Council on Competitiveness, Innovation and Creativity to address our long-run productivity crisis, which the World Bank recently addressed in that major report on Jamaica. It is clear from this manifesto that the people who prepared it have been doing some serious reading and are on the cutting edge of information in terms of the global economy and the imperatives of global competitiveness.

CUTTING-EDGE THINKING

The PNP is pledging to design a tax policy to encourage innovation because "there is an intense competition being conducted globally for securing innovation-based and knowledge-based businesses, both from the perspective of retaining domestic innovators who may be attracted away by other firms, as well as in attracting overseas innovators to our shores". Just having read Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's significant recent book, That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How we Can Come Back, as well as Jennifer Granholm's A Governor's Story: The Fight for Jobs and America's Economic Future, it was very gratifying to see that our political class was au fait with cutting-edge thinking.

The PNP proposes to give special incentives to support innovation and research and deve-lopment. When I read that the Greater Mandeville area had been identified as a location possessing human resources, health, education and information technology infrastructure, I could see that the PNP was grasping the concept that it is economic hubs and geographic centres of excellence which are driving investment.

"The Government will seek partnerships with the private sector to build out initially some one million square feet of space for joint venture development of 'plug and play' facilities ... . The provision of land will be the Government's equity in these projects." This is the kind of activist, facilitatory role the State needs to play to build private industry and engender growth. When one talks about a developmental state, one is not talking about a command economy which squeezes out the private sector or necessarily about socialism. One is talking about a state which actively facilitates and enables the private sector not just with monetary policy but with fiscal policy. So capitalists need not fear this interventionist state - it is a state intervening in their interest and seeking to create win-win situations for all classes. (Of course, this view is rejected as naïve idealism by Marxists, but that's another issue.)

What was also pleasing to see in this manifesto is that the PNP's vision for ICT development is beyond just low-level data-entry and business processing. It is looking to "job creation, especially at the higher end of the range". For this country to grow, it has to move beyond the naïve industrialisation-by-invitation model of the 1950s and 1960s - what we used to dub the Puerto Rican Model in the 1970s - to a more integrated, sophisticated model based on innovation, productivity and decent employment.

I was happy to read this in the manifesto: "Science and technology will be a central and all-embracing feature ... . All sectors of the society and economy will be incorporated in a national preoccupation with the role of science and technology." The manifesto goes on: "A PNP government will provide incentives to businesses, especially small and medium-sized ones, to become more competitive and efficient through relevant applications of science and technology."

Funding will be available for the Government to take up equity positions in small-business firms with a provision for owners to buy back shares over three to five years. This is a creative approach to our perennial collateral problems. Also the special, accountability-driven Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme (JEEP) tax incentives to encourage firms to employ additional people, is a useful proposal.

In re-engaging the IMF, however, the PNP must be prepared to fight to create special incentives as neoliberal orthodoxy makes the IMF suspicious of such mechanisms. So when the PNP says it will "develop a comprehensive system of incentives to encourage and enable investments by the private sector", this might be strongly resisted by the IMF. I hope the PNP has the courage of its convictions to push back against the IMF.

This raises an important issue: It is important for us, as a nation, through dialogue, argumentation and reasoning, to come to certain common positions in our interest and unite around them. In my view, even if the JLP wins the next election, these excellent proposals in the PNP manifesto should be adopted. It is no shame to the JLP that they did not first propose them.

And my hope is that the JLP will move from its free-market fundamentalism and dogmatism on the market to adopt a more flexible, pragmatic and open model of development - one that would be more favoured by Andrew Holness' mentor, Edward Seaga, who knew how to stand up to the IMF and who was no free-market ideologue. That is why he is credited with creating so many institutions - because he had a pragmatic view of economic development which involved some state activism and interventionism. I am hoping that if the JLP wins the next election, our young, bright and intellectually open prime minister will rethink his theology of the market and question its "magic" and that supposed "invisible hand" (Sounds very theological, doesn't it?).

no socialist threat

The PNP has demonstrated, in this manifesto, that one can stoutly defend fiscal prudence, fiscal discipline and macroeconomic stability while carving out a role for the state as active enabler and facilitator. The PNP says plainly: "We are of the view that the private sector is the main engine of growth", so forget about the propaganda about the PNP's reaching back for socialism and threatening market capitalism.

Interestingly, the PNP even accepts "the need for containment of public spending" and says openly that a PNP government would develop a memorandum of understanding with workers to reduce wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP - which is exactly what the present JLP agreement with the IMF commits to. So the PNP levels with the people and tells them they would not change that. This is certainly not populism! And it is clear, too, that despite its misguided and backward criticism of the JLP Government, it would continue the no-user fee and tuition-free education polices of the Government. The PNP should be ashamed of itself to have opposed these policies which are in the interest of the people.

And the most remarkable thing about this manifesto is that despite the PNP's strident and virulent charges of corruption of the governance process by this Government, this manifesto advances not one new and substantial governance principle that would check corruption. Not even the contractor general's much-lobbied-for proposal to have one anti-corruption body. This tacitly is an acknowledgment of the significant and far-reaching legislative work of the JLP in the areas of anti-corruption and governance. The JLP released its four-year achievements last week, and that gave ample evidence that PNP propaganda aside, much has been achieved in four years despite the worst economic recession in more than 70 years.

It's time for us to cut through the party propaganda and deal with good ideas - from wherever they emanate.

Ian Boyne, a veteran journalist, is the 2010-11 winner of the Morris Cargill Award for opinion journalism. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.