15- Billion deficit

[Karl]

Assasin: I put this before Willi years ago...and, then you -
What do we produce?

Where are the markets that our private sector target...and, get products into?

What standard of living do our people aspire to?

What is the size of our population?

-------

If we do not dramatically increase quantity and quality of the goods and services we can sell outside of the island...

...and, 'export' our people (sell our skills)...

...we will be going nowhere!

The market on the island is too small...the Caricom market is too small...to provide the sort of earnigs we aspire to bring home!

As I said, yeeeeeeeeears ago - the local mantra must be to the rest of the world - "mek wi tek weh yuh money"! ...i.e. provide goods and services such that the World will shop/buy from us.

Wah mi di seh...an ave been sayin bout Robert Lightbourne and his
screw-driver industries policy...value added export aimed ...and also for local consumption? Dat dere man ave sense!

Wah mi did seh bout Michael Manley - 'tun yuh hand mek fashion' produce as much as can be substituted instead of importing... Dat deh man ave sense!

...by the way, not long ago I mentioned our tourism product was in fact - EXPORT MARKET based i.e. just another product we sell to the World....sell in the World's marketplace. It all comes down to 'looking outwards' for money to take home.

...ooooh! In all of this I said our private sector is just 'bunch of failures'...constantly begging for Government handout - lower taxes, low interest funds, moratoriums, etc. - what the hell has that sector ever produced in quantities that we can look towards foreign exhange surpluses/strong foreign exchange inflows? Failures and beggers! ...excellent at papering over inefficiences by merely adding %age increases in margins!

Yuh memba earing mi seh dat...all of the above...before?

...an a dat sector Bruce a guh luk tuh fi 'drive' di economy?
Well we'll see!

[Bricktop]

it simply show how Omar and the PNP government have been operating, robbing Peter fi pay Paul.

No no i think dem was robbing Paul also

[Shatta]

Why do we need multinational loans when we have a diaspora that sends home $1.5 Billion US a year? Why voluntarily put ourselves back into slavery when we have the internet and a ready market just to the north of us?

Pepsi are you saying that thinking outside the box is above our mental reach? Are Jamaicans that dumb or is it something wrong with the race?

We can spend a$US Billion a year on digicel then we damn well can get our priorities right. First start with the class mentality and red eye no man no fi have but me and that starts with the tourism sector.

Don't take from anyone just expand the sector to include sports, heritage and eco tourism

cut back on that $20 million US a year tourism ad for tv and put most of it into a interactive web based site where people can TELL us what they want and so we stop guessing.

We can also sell products off that site.

Our minds is what is killing us. We really have second-class mentality and the way to get rid of it is to first accept the fact that we have it then we can work on it

respect

[Willi]

Why do we need multinational loans when we have a diaspora that sends home $1.5 Billion US a year? Why voluntarily put ourselves back into slavery when we have the internet and a ready market just to the north of us?

Pepsi are you saying that thinking outside the box is above our mental reach? Are Jamaicans that dumb or is it something wrong with the race?

We can spend a$US Billion a year on digicel then we damn well can get our priorities right. First start with the class mentality and red eye no man no fi have but me and that starts with the tourism sector.

Don't take from anyone just expand the sector to include sports, heritage and eco tourism

cut back on that $20 million US a year tourism ad for tv and put most of it into a interactive web based site where people can TELL us what they want and so we stop guessing.

We can also sell products off that site.

Our minds is what is killing us. We really have second-class mentality and the way to get rid of it is to first accept the fact that we have it then we can work on it

respect

Good thinking out of the box Shatta.

One other point you may not want to hear...but for a quik fix, we can go back to the Deputy PM of China. The man was there in Feb. 2005 and offered to invest US$10b in the Kingston Harbour for freezone, light manufacturing, amusement park at Pt Royal and making Kingston the western hemispheric hub for Chinese shipping. That is the first unsolicited offer, so imagine what can result from hardball negotiations from our side?? They want something we have badly and I am sure we can leverage this into something big and transforming.

Goodness knows why PJ never jumped on this. I am sure Portia was planning to.

[Assasin]

Putting Jamaica first

Putting Jamaica first
published: Sunday | September 9, 2007

Vantage Point, Commentary - With KEITH COLLISTER

The first question we need to honestly ask ourselves is why are we so poor in Jamaica?

Our economy is still mainly based on our natural endowments such as our beaches and bauxite, as evidenced by the fact that Jamaica's basket of goods exported is still almost the same as it was decades ago.

A country on a path to true development will see rapid changes in its export basket and value added, as it moves from raw materials to export manufacturing and internationally traded services. Government policy in Jamaica has, however, continued to emphasise 'physical' capital investments, such as highways, over people, and placed an overreliance on indicative measures of economic achievement such as net international reserves.

While macroeconomic stability is critical, it is not enough in a competitive world that instead requires that the Government must do everything it can to help the private sector succeed.

FAILURE TO COLLABORATE
Jamaica's main problem is that Government and the private sector have been unable to work together to create the sources of competitive advantage required for a high-productivity country, namely institutional, knowledge-based, human and cultural capital.

Canadian-based Jamaican businessman, Raymond Chang, in a recent speech, analysed Jamaica's strengths and weaknesses from an international investor's perspective.

According to Chang, Jamaica's strengths include its geographical position, English-speaking workforce, excellent infrastructure, sophisticated financial community, and a relatively stable political environment.

In his order of priority, our weaknesses included an enormous amount of red tape and bureaucracy, a level of political involvement in investment that is a recipe for corruption and inefficiency, and an education system that is grossly underfunded and misaligned with the current and future productivity requirements of a globalised market.

He also cited the impact of crime, not only its everyday impact on the population, but also the huge burden it imposes on the economy; a tax regime with no real incentive for production and which discourages real efficiency in the wage-earning sector; expensive energy and interest rates; and, a lethargic and inefficient labour force with a weak work ethic.

Chang's ideal is an investor-friendly environment, but he notes that today, Jamaica is a mere blip on the radar screen of world investors.

He cites a Canadian investor colleague telling him he is no longer interested in Jamaica because of 'country risk', by which he meant Jamaica's red tape and the number of times that he was being asked to 'grease palms'.

Finally, Chang notes that a relatively new kind of Jamaican cultural behaviour of entitlement, greed and 'ginalship' is becoming systemic throughout the society.

THE IRISH MODEL
In 1987, Ireland appeared to be going broke because of years of fiscal mismanagement. Most of their college graduates were emigrating, with a common refrain being "Will the last one to leave please turn out the lights".

Ireland had a very low to negligible growth rate in the 1980s when the rest of the world was booming. According to leading Irish economist, Dermot O'Brien, this was because it applied the wrong solutions to the problem, example raising taxes.

In that critical period, The London Times famously wrote that the international moneylenders were going "to pull the shutters down on Ireland". According to Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney: "It was because we nearly went under that we got the courage to change."

Continues next week

[Pepsi]

alright sass yu hear mi argument bout di irish dem,how dem invest in people and couple decades ago they were the sickman of europe today they have one of the healthiest economy in europe.we need fi stap labbrish and implement tings.not another word.

[Assasin]

yes sa.

[Karl]

oh my god,the economy was much worse off than we thought,he may have to implement back the school fee until further notice.

We? Much worse off than we thought?
Must have been you and a limited few?!

Where were you when we had discussions here on "whether or not a country could go bankrupt"? ...and, our balance of payments situation?

[Shatta]

Willi we need to let the Chinese only "assist" in building the railway for now along with LOANS and areas of expertise and education that can benefit us.
IN other words help to teach our next generation of teachers.

A few factories here and there that produce our own shoes, textiles and clothing manufaturing would greatly help.

We also need to step up in shipping and logistics, help in manufacturing plants that are going to manufacture products that will in turn help to build jamaica.

We need to do to them what they did to the US and others in letting them help to build up the country and not just come in and take

As you said we must be careful not to sell our legacy and the way we can do that is making sure that our voices are heard

respect

[Willi]

Willi we need to let the Chinese only "assist" in building the railway for now along with LOANS and areas of expertise and education that can benefit us.
IN other words help to teach our next generation of teachers.

A few factories here and there that produce our own shoes, textiles and clothing manufaturing would greatly help.

We also need to step up in shipping and logistics, help in manufacturing plants that are going to manufacture products that will in turn help to build jamaica.

We need to do to them what they did to the US and others in letting them help to build up the country and not just come in and take

As you said we must be careful not to sell our legacy and the way we can do that is making sure that our voices are heard

respect

100% agree.

[Gamma]

WAIT...unnuh nuh si nutten yet...i suspect that a hitherto unheard of breed of corruption will be exposed yuh si!!!!???

here one poliician (who won a seat by the way) claimed that if he and is party were elected, he personally would like to make 20 millionaires!!

again i expect that there was a reason why pj seh...him nuh want to live in jamaica under a jlp government!

[Karl]

WAIT...unnuh nuh si nutten yet...i suspect that a hitherto unheard of breed of corruption will be exposed yuh si!!!!???

here one poliician (who won a seat by the way) claimed that if he and is party were elected, he personally would like to make 20 millionaires!!

again i expect that there was a reason why pj seh...him nuh want to live in jamaica under a jlp government!

In his constituencies 20 millioniares only?

That's not good - J$1,000,000.00 = U$28,000.00 (approx.) Typical political attempt at tricking the voters and the prest of the people. mek hit sound lacka nuff money!

Many voters particularly in rural parishes have family assets in excess of $1,000,000.00 through real property (buildings and land) and household goods and livestock.

im or har need to wuk ard fi mek nuf-nuf millionaires a im/ar yard (constituencies). Ambition/aims fi im constituents low bad!

[Assasin]

you got that right brethren.

We have to be careful, just like how we give away Bue Mountain Coffee to the Japanese and Jamaica can't sell it on the open market to take advantage of world price.

[Karl]

Re: MPs salaries

Should happen though.

Why would anyone want ot roll back those salaries? ...unless it is a mere political gimmick?

The salaries must be such that improved suitable candidates are wooed. ...then, we should receive value for money spent?

pay lousy = lousy workers!

pay great = possibility of great workers.
We need to have such a possibility....possibility of good through great workers!

[Karl]

well Lazie said smaller government,and cuts here and there.

You do know that that would mean in our land of low levels of employment - high unemployment - that unemployment would grow?

Is the aim really to return to the '80s where the ranks of the unemployed grew and created a great unease among the working class and a voting of the JLP out of power?

The JLP, I think, has no choice but to fall inline with that they preached against - increase spending on social programs, increase numbers of workers in and on government service agencies and government projects - i.e. continued expansion on delivery of health services (captial expenditure on physical structures and physical products - medicines,instruments, machines, - increase employment); delivery of 'piped water'; areas such as - fire services; security services; education services; roads; redefining how we build and where we build and realigning roads, utilities transmission conduits in many villages and townships....etc., etc., etc.

...so it is loans, borrowings as usual...

The problem is the JLP campaigned on/gave the impression that it would do as you are suggesting and 'deliver more' to the people. Certainly we were told - the PNP government borrowed too much; spent too much... size of the civil service too larger... ...nothing was done = read no new improvement in physical structures, delivery of the various services, etc., etc.

How then do you provide more jobs, improve what is already being provided - water, roads, building: hospitals, fire stations; police stations; schools; and the equipment etc. necessary to deliver services promissed - fulfill expectations - including free education tuition and free health services?

...then there is the additional matter of making what was called 'growing the economy'. What will be the new government initiatives introduced? Is there expected attendant immediate (seed money - improving facilities/making delivery of services more efficient) committments? Do those demand additional spending?

How does all this fit with "No new taxes! No increased borrowings!"? The PNP government are like beggars...selling out the country...and, all the other in my opinion, empty catch phrases?