Logic to JMA-JEA merger
PERHAPS ONE should not read too much into the fact that the website of neither the Jamaica Manufacturers’ Association (JMA) nor the Jamaica Exporters’ Association (JEA) has as yet reported their merger, announced by their presidents last weekend. Their staff was probably too occupied planning and hosting their biennial trade expo to attend to what might, in the circumstance, have been considered mere detail.
Nonetheless, the members of these two venerable organisations will want to be assured not only of the apparent logic of the marriage, but of the relevance of the new organisation, beyond the cursory declarations by Metry Seaga, the JMA president, and his JEA counterpart, Michelle Chong. The wider public, too, has a stake in this matter. If the quality of last week’s expo is to stand as a metaphor for what the combined organisation can deliver, there is value yet to be extracted from it.
INDUSTRY TITANS
There are few business/trade-related organisations that have been in constant and effective existence as these two. The JMA is in its 71st year, having been launched in 1947, near the birth of Jamaica’s modern industrial development. Its presidents, executives, and other leading lights have been among the titans of Jamaican industry, who championed the expansion of this sector.
The JEA is decades younger. It was formed in 1966 to promote the interest of business that not only generated products for the Jamaican market, but also wanted to sell them overseas. There has, however, always been an overlap in what they do. Further, the organisations have long cooperated on projects such as the trade expo, which they have jointly put on since the early 1970s.
Yet, despite merger discussions over many years, and a marriage arranged in the late 1990s, it was never consummated. Mr Seaga and Ms Chong, we are sure, will be among the first to concede that venerable as they are, and important as they may still be, their organisations don’t exude the sexiness of decades past.
For instance, a quarter-century ago, value added by manufacturing accounted for around 17 per cent of Jamaica’s GDP. It is now below nine per cent. Over the same period, the value of exports as a percentage of GDP has halved, to 31 per cent. While the ratio of imports to GDP has fallen nearly 11 points, the dollar value of these imports has spiralled by over 133 per cent to more than US$6 billion.
INCREASED IMPORTS
Put another way, since the mid-1990s, until the recent signs of a recovery under the IMF-policed Economic Recovery Programme, Jamaica has become less competitive as a manufacturer, and the sector lost jobs and exports. The country also imported more.
These are the kinds of issues that the new, merged organisation will have to address, and hopefully more effectively and efficiently than in the past. Their issues, really, are different sides of the same coin. For as Mr Seaga said: “The companies (JMA and JEA) were doing a lot of the same things, catering to the same people ... . We thought that it would be more efficient to come together as one voice and get Jamaica ready to manufacture and export the volumes we need to.”
In this regard, we expect that the new institution will be at the forefront of serious, data-driven policy analyses that are clearly and transparently articulated. We even expect to find this kind of information on their new website.