Are Jamaicans wizing up to the Tyranny of the Roti-Eaters??

[Don1]

u make my point...TT will not make concessions because they have not been threatened with a loss of our trade....which is what I'm advocating... which is something that can be done tomorrow

The "broader picture" has only long term solutions...comprehensive socioeconomic, political & education reform to raise productivity to regional levels...if we start now...perhaps in 15 years we could achieve that...

...but sadly our level of ovastanding is so low...we readily accept rule by criminals and incompetents

No hopers...

[Assasin]

Do you also consider the fact that we can never produce when investors have to borrow at 25 and 30% when most of our competitiors are borrowing at 14% and below? Unnu talk bout uppression but what more oprressive when only brown man can invest the money he already have and foriegners can come in with their money they already have?

We can't compete not only with Trinidad not only because of energy.

[Don1]

Do you also consider the fact that we can never produce when investors have to borrow at 25 and 30% when most of our competitiors are borrowing at 14% and below? Unnu talk bout uppression but what more oprressive when only brown man can invest the money he already have and foriegners can come in with their money they already have?

We can't compete not only with Trinidad not only because of energy.

It's really not rocket science

we don't produce enough goods & services because our PRODUCTIVITY is low

our productivity is low because the society is dysfunctional...primarily kept that way by political & business corruption and lack of investment in education..

These issues can only be fixed by fundamental reforms

[ReggaeMike]

The truth is a bit more nuanced that what you wrote Don1:

Pretty sounding words but you are clearly unaware of some of the important issues in the JA-TT trading relationship.... issues which amount to unfair trade

Caricom involves a trade treaty where its members are supposed to be accorded "national treatment" i.e. Jamaica's businesses are supposed to be treated the same as TT businesses in Trinidad... and vice versa...Jamaica scrupulously adheres to this principle...unlike Trinidad which:

(1) routinely imposes non-tariff barriers to Jamaican exports to TT to protect their industries.

Sometimes these barriers are unfair, but other times I'm not so sure. For instance some time back there was a bruhaha over Jamaican patties, BUT the FRONT PAGE news on both daily newspapers just a week or two before a shipment of Jamaican beef patties was held up was the story about a Jamaican government study of abattoirs which showed that of the 1,100+ abattoirs on the island, less than 500 were registered with the ministry of health......

I'm telling you that after that story came it out it made me think twice about eating beef patties. And I can only imagine what the thoughts of customs officials must have been when they read the story and the very next shipment was a bunch of beef patties from Jamaica. Having friends who have worked in customs/ports and in air traffic control in Jamaica I know their job is a thankless one, because if they are too harsh, they got complaints but then if they are too lax and something happens (airplane has even a minor accident or some people get Salmonella poisoning) then their job might very well be on the line unless they can give a VERY good reason for their error (and even then they might still get the boot).

(3) Subsidizes energy pricing to their manufacturers and refuses these subsidies to Jamaican firms...which gives their firms a huge price advantage... this is a clear violation of so called "national treatment".

I see this claim made routinely but to this day I've never seen proof of this subsidy other than the fact that oil shipped from a facility in Trinidad to a place in Trinidad will naturally cost less than oil shipped from that same facility to a place thousands of miles away via boat and then offloaded (possibly at one of the ports controlled by the gangsters who will demand a cut of the money) and then shipped via tanker to the ultimate customer. But that's not a subsidy by Trinidad, that's just the reality of prices. Given Jamaica's culture of useless middle-men it wouldn't surprise me if the subsidy we should really be talking about is the subsidy of the Jamaican taxpayer to idle men who "ensure" the oil "reach" and who provide "security".

Simple geography and economics means oil will ALWAYS cost less in producer countries than in recipient countries because it cost money (for fuel, labour, unofficial taxes to gunmen, etc) to move oil from point A to point B and the further you have to move (and the more forms of transport needed) the more it will cost.

One interesting observation that nobody seems to make note of (probably because they don't know about it or it is inconvenient) is that gas prices at the pump in some of the islands in the Eastern Caribbean which are actually physically closer to Trinidad are higher than the prices at the pump in some Jamaican gas stations (or at least they were before the recent price hike in fuel over the past couple years). This is mainly due to government taxes on fuel from my understanding. So how come those countries can seem to be more productive than Jamaica but with historically higher gas prices? A lot of the time we look for external boogie-men when we should really be confronting the demons within ourselves if we want to progress.

Jamaica should threaten withdrawal from this unfair trade to force better terms of trade...or take our business elsewhere...there is no shortage of suppliers for the goods Trinidad supplies...local & international.

That's how smart countries play the trade game...maneuvering to get the best terms

Jamaica is not smart

You're right, but that scenario wouldn't be smart either. The focus on the trade with Trinidad is symptomatic of Jamaica's problem of focusing on minor issues and phantoms while leaving major issues to boil. For instance, sure Jamaica has a trade deficit with Trinidad, but then can anyone name a country with which Jamaica has a trade surplus? Why is that? Japan alone accounts for a lot of Jamaica's imports and we don't even realize it because we are so used to products for Sony, Panasonic, Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Subaru and Isuzu that we don't even realize that our real trade deficit with Japan (including sales of cars from middle country suppliers or from subsidiary companies in the US) must be quite high indeed. The deficit with the US (of all countries) is stupefying. US$920 million dollars (easily more what we import from Trinidad) and this from a country renowned as one of the nation's with the greatest debt! What is it that we are importing from the US so that we can't do without? Or rather, why is it that the US with 300 times the population of Trinidad (and a much wealthier market to boot) only imports 17 times as much Jamaican products? And why does the US import 10 times as much from the Dominican Republic (a non-oil-producing country) as Jamaica and 18 times as much from Trinidad as Jamaica? And why does Trinidad have a trade surplus with the US amounting to US$3 billion?

If Jamaica exported as much to the US as the Dominican Republic does then Jamaica would have a surplus of US$1.5 billion with the US. And it is quite possible because Trinidad actually imports more from the US than Jamaica does.

Blackmailing other countries into buying our products (which is essentially what your scenario calls for) or into better trade terms is not a long-term plan. It might work in the short term. The Ukraine attempted to do it with Russia and at times got favourable deals with regards to fuel and transit fees, however Russia is now fully committed to bypassing Ukraine entirely despite the election of a government there that isn't anti-Russian as the last one was. So Ukraine benefited in the short term, but within a few years, Ukraine will find itself bypassed and all those lucrative transit fees it used to charge won't count for much since Russia won't use them much for transit to key markets. What Jamaica needs to do as Assassin and others have said is to focus on increasing productivity so that we actually have goods people want to buy (or at least won't be afraid to buy because they hear that more than 50% of abattoirs chop up meat without the ministry of health knowing about them). Threatening to take our deficit elsewhere won't really solve anything since Jamaica will still have a deficit (probably a worse one since new suppliers could bank on our need to spite Trinidad and thus charge us more than Trinidad and know that we will take it) and all that will happen is that Trinidad's exporters will eventually find other markets whilst the lumpen in Jamaica feel good at having "taught Trinidad a lesson" whilst Trinidad continues to make trade surpluses (their trade surplus with the US easily dwarfs their trade surplus with us and the loss of trade with us would be absorbed by the surplus with the US) whilst we continue to make unsustainable trade deficits. Meanwhile the actual avenues open to Jamaica to pursue grievances (if they were real) remain ignored. So folks call for an end to Trinidad's energy subsidy yet all they have to do is bring a suit to court. The reason why it hasn't happened yet is probably because we know that what we are really calling for is for Trinidad to subsidize us whilst maintaining market prices at home (something which is unreasonable and which we would never agree to if the situation was reversed) or for Trinidad to impose super-high taxes on their own fuel (possibly over 100% of the cost of the fuel) while the rest of the region continues to tax fuel as normal.

If Jamaica was really smart then it would manoeuvre itself into better trade terms by getting productivity up and encouraging savings and a less expensive lifestyles (Hondas over Hummers or even Island Cruisers over Toyotas). Producing quality goods at affordable prices (made so by realistic labour costs, reduced security expenses due to reduced crime, tamed inflation, reduced energy costs through the pursuit of ethanol, wind and solar power etc) is guaranteed to get you into markets one way or another. Even the open discrimination of taxes on Brazilian ethanol by the US and Europe hasn't dented the Brazilian ethanol industry and Brazil plans to bypass them by simply refining their ethanol in middle countries - their ethanol is so cost effective that even that route would probably guarantee that when it enters Europe or the US it is competitive in terms of pricing. Ensuring that there are no questions surrounding the quality of these goods (as would have happened with the illegal abattoirs story and the story of fish being sold after being preserved in formalin) would also go a long way to ensuring better terms of trade.

As it stand now Jamaica is a midget with delusions of grandeur when it comes to the perceived self-importance to trade with other countries.

[Don1]

[QUOTE]

The truth is a bit more nuanced that what you wrote Don1:



Sometimes these barriers are unfair, but other times I'm not so sure. For instance some time back there was a bruhaha over Jamaican patties, BUT the FRONT PAGE news on both daily newspapers just a week or two before a shipment of Jamaican beef patties was held up was the story about a Jamaican government study of abattoirs which showed that of the 1,100+ abattoirs on the island, less than 500 were registered with the ministry of health......

I'm telling you that after that story came it out it made me think twice about eating beef patties. And I can only imagine what the thoughts of customs officials must have been when they read the story and the very next shipment was a bunch of beef patties from Jamaica. Having friends who have worked in customs/ports and in air traffic control in Jamaica I know their job is a thankless one, because if they are too harsh, they got complaints but then if they are too lax and something happens (airplane has even a minor accident or some people get Salmonella poisoning) then their job might very well be on the line unless they can give a VERY good reason for their error (and even then they might still get the boot).

Truth is always nuanced and every circumstance possible cannot be covered in a few lines. You raise 1 issue of patties to refute my point...your explanation re the individual patty issue may or may not be valid...I don't know the specifics.

What I do know is that Jamaican manufacturers have been complaining for decades about lack of ready access to the TT market due to non-tariff barriers...ask Doreen Frankson ex-JMA president.

I see this claim made routinely but to this day I've never seen proof of this subsidy other than the fact that oil shipped from a facility in Trinidad to a place in Trinidad will naturally cost less than oil shipped from that same facil
ity to a place thousands of miles away via boat and then offloaded (possibly at one of the ports controlled by the gangsters who will demand a cut of the money) and then shipped via tanker to the ultimate customer. But that's not a subsidy by Trinidad, that's just the reality of prices. Given Jamaica's culture of useless middle-men it wouldn't surprise me if the subsidy we should really be talking about is the subsidy of the Jamaican taxpayer to idle men who "ensure" the oil "reach" and who provide "security".
Simple geography and economics means oil will ALWAYS cost less in producer countries than in recipient countries because it cost money (for fuel, labour, unofficial taxes to gunmen, etc) to move oil from point A to point B and the further you have to move (and the more forms of transport needed) the more it will cost.

For proof you merely have to look at the price the TT producers sell energy to businesses... it's a fraction of Jamaica's.

National treatment does not mean the final price will be the same...the price to Jamaica under a favorable interpretation of the trade treaty would be the domestic TT charge plus freight....which is probably much less than 10% by value.

One interesting observation that nobody seems to make note of (probably because they don't know about it or it is inconvenient) is that gas prices at the pump in some of the islands in the Eastern Caribbean which are actually physically closer to Trinidad are higher than the prices at the pump in some Jamaican gas stations (or at least they were before the recent price hike in fuel over the past couple years). This is mainly due to government taxes on fuel from my understanding. So how come those countries can seem to be more productive than Jamaica but with historically higher gas prices? A lot of the time we look for external boogie-men when we should really be confronting the demons within ourselves if we want to progress.

First...I am not saying that favorable trade terms with TT will solve our productivity problems...I already outlined the long term fixes in response to Assasin.

You're right, but that scenario wouldn't be smart either. The focus on the trade with Trinidad is symptomatic of Jamaica's problem of focusing on minor issues and phantoms while leaving major issues to boil. For instance, sure Jamaica has a trade deficit with Trinidad, but then can anyone name a country with which Jamaica has a trade surplus? Why is that? Japan alone accounts for a lot of Jamaica's imports and we don't even realize it because we are so used to products for Sony, Panasonic, Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Subaru and Isuzu that we don't even realize that our real trade deficit with Japan (including sales of cars from middle country suppliers or from subsidiary companies in the US) must be quite high indeed. The deficit with the US (of all countries) is stupefying. US$920 million dollars (easily more what we import from Trinidad) and this from a country renowned as one of the nation's with the greatest debt! What is it that we are importing from the US so that we can't do without? Or rather, why is it that the US with 300 times the population of Trinidad (and a much wealthier market to boot) only imports 17 times as much Jamaican products? And why does the US import 10 times as much from the Dominican Republic (a non-oil-producing country) as Jamaica and 18 times as much from Trinidad as Jamaica? And why does Trinidad have a trade surplus with the US amounting to US$3 billion?

If Jamaica exported as much to the US as the Dominican Republic does then Jamaica would have a surplus of US$1.5 billion with the US. And it is quite possible because Trinidad actually imports more from the US than Jamaica does.

Blackmailing other countries into buying our products (which is essentially what your scenario calls for) or into better trade terms is not a long-term plan. It might work in the short term. The Ukraine attempted to do it with Russia and at times got favourable deals with regards to fuel and transit fees, however Russia is now fully committed to bypassing Ukraine entirely despite the election of a government there that isn't anti-Russian as the last one was. So Ukraine benefited in the short term, but within a few years, Ukraine will find itself bypassed and all those lucrative transit fees it used to charge won't count for much since Russia won't use them much for transit to key markets. What Jamaica needs to do as Assassin and others have said is to focus on increasing productivity so that we actually have goods people want to buy (or at least won't be afraid to buy because they hear that more than 50% of abattoirs chop up meat without the ministry of health knowing about them). Threatening to take our deficit elsewhere won't really solve anything since Jamaica will still have a deficit (probably a worse one since new suppliers could bank on our need to spite Trinidad and thus charge us more than Trinidad and know that we will take it) and all that will happen is that Trinidad's exporters will eventually find other markets whilst the lumpen in Jamaica feel good at having "taught Trinidad a lesson" whilst Trinidad continues to make trade surpluses (their trade surplus with the US easily dwarfs their trade surplus with us and the loss of trade with us would be absorbed by the surplus with the US) whilst we continue to make unsustainable trade deficits. Meanwhile the actual avenues open to Jamaica to pursue grievances (if they were real) remain ignored. So folks call for an end to Trinidad's energy subsidy yet all they have to do is bring a suit to court. The reason why it hasn't happened yet is probably because we know that what we are really calling for is for Trinidad to subsidize us whilst maintaining market prices at home (something which is unreasonable and which we would never agree to if the situation was reversed) or for Trinidad to impose super-high taxes on their own fuel (possibly over 100% of the cost of the fuel) while the rest of the region continues to tax fuel as normal.

If Jamaica was really smart then it would manoeuvre itself into better trade terms by getting productivity up and encouraging savings and a less expensive lifestyles (Hondas over Hummers or even Island Cruisers over Toyotas). Producing quality goods at affordable prices (made so by realistic labour costs, reduced security expenses due to reduced crime, tamed inflation, reduced energy costs through the pursuit of ethanol, wind and solar power etc) is guaranteed to get you into markets one way or another. Even the open discrimination of taxes on Brazilian ethanol by the US and Europe hasn't dented the Brazilian ethanol industry and Brazil plans to bypass them by simply refining their ethanol in middle countries - their ethanol is so cost effective that even that route would probably guarantee that when it enters Europe or the US it is competitive in terms of pricing. Ensuring that there are no questions surrounding the quality of these goods (as would have happened with the illegal abattoirs story and the story of fish being sold after being preserved in formalin) would also go a long way to ensuring better terms of trade.

As it stand now Jamaica is a midget with delusions of grandeur when it comes to the perceived self-importance to trade with other countries.

1. Trade with TT is NOT a minor issue... the positive balance in TT's favour is above US$400M... a US$4B outflow over a decade

2. The TT surplus with the US is almost entirely based on LNG exports of which they are the LARGEST supplier to the US market

3. It is legit to make TT trade an issue because it's a country we can use leverage on as we're in the same trade block...the other countries we have zero leverage over.

4. I already stated the solution to productivity is broad reform which I have advocated here since creation...but the TT issue is something than we should address if we're smart...there's zero downside

[Karl]

you don't have to educate me on the relationship between Trinidad and Jamaica, I know about it. It is for us to be smart and do what we have to do to cut the imports or people will always take advantage.

The broader problem is Jamaica can't continue to import at the rate it is right now if we can't produce and sell. Just take a look at our trade balance with all the countries in the region or as a matter of fact with 90% of our trading partners. We are simply importing too much especially things we can produce if we just put our minds and heart together.

Produce at prices that can compete with the imports?

[Assasin]

my first post had nothing to do with rocket science. Read it again.

[Don1]

my first post had nothing to do with rocket science. Read it again.

sorry...not worth the time

[Assasin]

hear hear.

Good talk sah. We need fi concentrate on what we can do instead of what they can do for us.

[Don1]

and what do you suggest we do.... other than "put our minds and hearts together"...which is meaningless... not a policy.... or "stop importing so much"...also not a policy

How is productivity to be raised?

[Assasin]

if a policy you want mi will give you policies.

You think man can write thesis everytime them post?

[Don1]

if a policy you want mi will give you policies.

You think man can write thesis everytime them post?

look like smaddy trubble yuh inna di nite yah

[Muadib]

MANLEY - 70's
PJ, OMAR - FINSAC..

Game Over.

PNP is the root of all evil.

End of Story.

Ebryting else is just yapping...

[Don1]

on 2nd thought...spare me the policies

[Assasin]

something wrong wid you.