Now to break us out of the low-growth trap

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness and wife Juliet wave to guests as they arrive for his swearing-in cermony on Tuesday at King’s House in St Andrew. Photo: Joseph Wellington

The silly season is finally over. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) defied some people’s projections by claiming a comfortable 35-28 seat victory in the September 3, 2025 General Election and a first-ever third-consecutive term for that party.

During the campaign, the People’s National Party (PNP) offered imaginative handouts and generous tax exemptions. The JLP stuck to its DNA and mainly promised to cut red tape and taxes. There was, as far as we are aware, no return to the ruinous election-winning “run wid it” strategy, and the Government continued to reduce the debt.

This is worthy of acclaim and must become the norm. Indeed, it is possible that this adherence to fiscal discipline may have convinced swing voters that the JLP was the better bet.

Now, as the new Administration gets to work, it must open the throttle to finally break the country out of the low-growth trap. This is the dragon that neither political party has been able to slay.

The election manifestos were little more than glossy sales brochures; therefore, we need to agree on the shop manual for the serious plan for growth as Jamaica has missed several international growth spurts over the last four decades.

This time we will have to break out of a chronic low-growth trap while the world is slowing down and supply chains are in flux.

Against that background, the Government, we suggest, should be inclusive as it goes about forging the path to growth along with the institutional infrastructure to deliver it.

It should also do so keeping in mind the advice by former Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke in his pivotal lecture last June titled ‘The Caribbean Challenge: Fostering Growth and Resilience Amidst Global Uncertainty’. In that lecture Dr Clarke’s basic message was the need for a laser focus on policy reform to remove the obstacles to higher productivity.

Jamaica earned worldwide acclaim for reducing its debt from a crippling 147 per cent of gross domestic product to 68 per cent, mainly through painful sacrifices. This experience taught us that we can solve our own problems — an essential lesson, given the global trend to cut concessional finance and reduce access to markets.

To achieve faster growth in a world that is slowing down we will need to move much faster to improve access to financing, forge strategic partnerships with new trading partners, subsidise sectors aligned with our comparative advantage, invest heavily in human capital and the digitisation of the economy, massively improve the social safety net, and bring down the cost of energy. A case in point is the burgeoning trans-shipment hub that could benefit from the reversal of globalisation and the emergence of new trade poles.

It is time to jettison extraneous initiatives that distract us from our goal. The reduction of waste in the public sector should be treated with the same intensity with which we ensured compliance with the International Monetary Fund programme. Wasteful diplomatic frills and pointless first-class trips should be scrapped.

We have a chance to not only survive but grasp opportunities presented by the deepening global polarisation and international economic slowdown. Our fiscal house is in order, and we are battle-hardened by the historic debt reduction programme. We have what it takes to chart a course in this hostile international context and the growing risk of extreme weather events.

Let’s get to it.

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