Where is the task force’s terms of reference?
THE GOVERNMENT has taken an important first step towards planning an ordered resuscitation of Jamaica’s economy. More, however, needs to be known about what, specifically, is expected of the COVID19 economic recovery task force before it is possible to gauge the likelihood of its success. The administration should start by publishing the group’s terms of reference, which usually happens simultaneously with the appointment of committees.
The 22-member group, which includes Finance Minister Nigel Clarke and four of his Cabinet colleagues, has an impressive mix of private-sector leaders from a relatively broad range of industries, whose mandate by Prime Minister Andrew Holness is not to be a “talk shop”.
“… This is about the nuts and bolts (and) putting in the logistics,” said Mr Holness. “It is about getting to the nitty-gritty of the subject.”
We agree. There is much work to be done if Jamaica is to survive the mire of COVID-19 and thrive in the reshaped global economic and political environment that we expect to be its aftermath. So, the task force’s approach can’t be too narrow, or constrained. That is why its terms of reference ought to be framed with the scope for a broad interpretation of its mandate.
COVID-19 has caused shutdowns of substantial portions of global economies. World output is expected to decline by three per cent in 2020. Jamaica, with its critical tourism industry in freeze, will, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), see its gross domestic product shrink by 5.6 per cent, although some analysts believe the fallout could be worse. Indeed, the crisis in tourism is being worsened by the sharp decline in the island’s second-largest source of foreign exchange, remittances from Jamaicans abroad. Household incomes are being further weakened by the lockdown of some communities, as well as other containment measures aimed at slowing the virus. In the circumstances, the number of Jamaicans who live below the poverty line – 20 per cent at the last survey – will possibly increase.
BROAD PARTICIPATION
It is against this backdrop that this newspaper called for broad participation, beyond government ministers and public-sector bureaucrats, when monumental decisions are being taken about the health and livelihood of Jamaicans, including the closing of large swathes of the national economy. Or, conversely, reopening portions thereof. Such actions should benefit from inputs by the country’s best minds and creative policy formulations, around which national consensus must be built.
We had proposed a series of sector-specific task forces to plan not only for after COVID-19, but to advise on the best policy options in the midst of the crisis. The current task force has echoes of that suggestion, assuming that its mandate is sufficiently flexible, allowing it to have sector subcommittees and to call on the research and analytical capabilities of state agencies such as the Planning Institute of Jamaica, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, and, if necessary, The University of the West Indies.
But this project must not focus only on what is to be done to safely reopen the various sectors of the economy, and how these are to be timed and sequenced. For, as we have noted already, the international political and economic arrangements that existed before the COVID-19 will be badly stressed in its aftermath, including by, on the one hand, questions about the merits of economic globalisation, and of multilateralism, on the other. Ironically, even with competing interests, potentially overlapping outcomes for either side could be dangerous for small, developing countries like Jamaica.
In this regard, Nigel Clarke’s task force, apart from the immediate and mission-critical task of finding ways to rev the economy, must begin thinking of ways of sustaining it in the longer term in a changed global environment. Or, perhaps another group should be tasked with advancing that job.