Blurred Vision

The Vision 2030 timeline for Jamaica to be seen as a developed country will not be met, Prime Minister Andrew Holness confirmed Saturday night as he addressed a town hall meeting with Jamaicans in the United States.

“The goal posts have moved,” the prime minister told the audience of around 500 Jamaicans at the town hall in the Bronx, New York, organised by the Jamaican Consulate in New York.

According to Holness, while the rudimentary structure of the economy is in place, it is not enough for Jamaica to meet the goals of Vision 2030.

“We need to build out the economy, and to do so, we have to expand and grow the economy,” he said.

The prime minister’s comments follow an admission earlier this month by Peisha Bryan Lee, programme manager for Vision 2030, who said that Jamaica could miss the timeline set to achieve developed country status through its Vision 2030 National Development Plan.

Bryan Lee, who was responding to questions at the Planning Institute of Jamaica’s (PIOJ) quarterly press briefing, had said, “Our data does suggest that the goals and outcomes, and particularly, I would say, the targets that were benchmarked against developed country status standards, most likely, will not be achieved by 2030.”

Too many objectives

The revelation that Jamaica will not meet its development targets by 2030 is in sharp contrast to Holness’ position on the matter in November 2021.

At the time, with the economy continuing to show signs of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and 12 years in the 21-year national development plan, Holness expressed confidence in Jamaica’s ability to achieve the goals of Vision 2030.

However, in the months following Holness’ 2021 statement, several experts raised doubts over whether the targets could, indeed, be met under the nation’s existing circumstances.

In August 2022, development economist Dr Adrian Stokes, in considering whether there were key errors in formulating Vision 2030, said that, perhaps, the plan included too many strategic objectives for a country that is constrained in its capacity.

“This also creates communication challenges since I doubt many Jamaicans appreciate what are the major Vision 2030 goals and how these are to be achieved. So Vision 2030, I suspect, creates an execution challenge given its very wide scope and our limited execution capacity as a country,” Stokes told The Gleaner at the time.

Stokes also asserted that missing national consensus on key initiatives was a major problem. For example, he said security requires certain legislative initiatives that are difficult to implement without broad national agreement.

Such national agreement on security, Holness indicated on Saturday, is expected to come after the Government reviews the preliminary report on of the National Commission on Violence Prevention.

Also in August 2022, former head of the PIOJ, Dr Wesley Hughes, had said that national development was a long-term, complex process that requires, among other things, dedicated, passionate leadership at various levels.

“Vision 2030 is an attempt to capture and synthesise the dreams and aspirations of the key stakeholders in the Jamaican society. That is what the four goals and outcomes represent. But goals have to be backed up by solid implementation, and this is where there is a clear historic deficit across all sectors.”

On Saturday, Holness, in pointing to a silver lining, noted that though Jamaica would not become a developed country by 2030, a review showed that the island was doing the best of all Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations.

The prime minister said that if an individual were to follow the news media and social media, it would seem as though “the sky is falling in” on Jamaica.

He argued, however, that because of the work his administration has been doing to build out the Jamaican economy, the fundamentals are in place for the economy to grow and expand. However, to achieve this goal of Jamaica becoming a developed country, it would have to take advantage of the technological revolution to attract new development.

“To this end, we will be making a massive investment in education in Jamaica,” he said.

A real struggle

The prime minister said Jamaica was taking steps forward to becoming a developed country but was facing a real struggle.

He listed poor infrastructure and violence among the issues with which the country must contend.

Holness spoke about the strides Jamaica has made in lowering inflation and the unemployment rates, noting that for the past nine budgets, there have been no net new taxes, with the last six budgets not having any new taxes.

“We have put in place the structure to build a real economy, but we need to expand and grow the economy,” he said.

The prime minister said the Government had undertaken a survey of the road network system in Jamaica, and over the next 20 years, significant investment would be made to upgrade the country’s roads.

He also spoke of the need to reform the public service, saying that it has to be built for stability.

“The bureaucracy, as it is currently, is not built for growth,” he said.

To this end, he said a complete overhaul of the bureaucracy, to make it more efficient to do business, would be undertaken. A number of functions would be online, which means that people would not need to go into an office to conduct governmental businesses, he said.

Holness referred to Jamaica as a “work in progress although significant progress has been made”.

editorial@gleanerjm.com