Dawn Ritch, Contributor
RECENTLY I've written very little about the island's economics and politics, because the subjects are altogether too depressing.
Our primary objective now as Jamaicans can only be to salvage the last thing left which is our sanity.
But the mere contemplation of the carnage inflicted by this Government's policies upon Jamaican businesses and families is enough to unhinge the soundest mind.
And there is no end to it. Having destroyed the domestic financial sector on the grounds that depositors' savings and pensions had been invested in real estate and hotels leaving the local institutions illiquid, the Government itself now proposes to do the same thing but on a scale so grand it beggars the imagination.
Last week a press conference was held to announce that the last two international bids for construction of the US$850 million "Highway 2000" project had been formally accepted. Our illustrious press fraternity did remember to ask where the money was coming from, but the reply has yet to be fully disentangled since it seems not to have been very confident.
Some of the money, the press was told, will come from the "bidders" themselves, who will repay themselves with a toll on the highway for 35 years. In answer to direct questions, the press was also told that some of the money is also to come from "soft-loans" from sources such as local pension funds. Such funds would include the National Insurance Scheme and Life of Jamaica (LoJ) and this money would also be repaid by a portion of the take on the toll over 35 years.
Madness
This is utter and shameless madness. LoJ is currently owned by FINSAC and is responsible for the largest, privately administered pension fund in the country. NIS is publicly administered by the Ministry of Labour, and the National Insurance Fund, which controls the money, was last week given a brand new chairman and board of directors. This is the same public fund with billions upon billions of dollars in it that former Labour Minister Portia Simpson Miller refused to have invested in effectively worthless FINSAC paper.
Shortly after that, Mrs. Simpson Miller was moved to the Tourism Ministry. She is accused by insiders of not being progressive because she didn't want the NIF made into an executive agency. Now the NIF is to become an executive agency, and its chairman replaced by Professor Gordon Shirley, who substantively held a teaching post at the University of the West Indies and was most recently chairman of the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo), a company which loses 17 per cent of its power generation to leakage and theft. He departed after JPSCo had added to the already over-burdened householders and businesses electricity rates even higher than before.
Now he is to preside over the NIF, and it is hoped that he will not leave it vulnerable to leakage, plunder, and have the paltry pensions paid to people in Jamaica jeopardised by potential illiquidity - illiquidity caused by investing their money in "Highway 2000", the P.M.'s pipe dream of doubtful financial viability.
Dr. Omar Davies, Minister of Finance, bears fiduciary responsibility to this country. His Government has just sold the JPSCo to an overseas investor for US$203 million. Arguably the most valuable asset in the country, the proceeds from its sales should be properly used to pay down high-cost FINSAC debt.
No plans yet
The Government has not however, said what they plan to do with the JPSCo money. Dr. Davies is busy, cap in hand, borrowing money overseas to plug the holes in the national budget that he will table shortly. So he and his Government certainly don't have the money to invest in "Highway 2000". Indeed even the US$203 million from the sale of JPSCo will most likely be co-mingled in the budget now being prepared. So our patrimony from JPSCo will probably be spent on recurrent expenditure.
Since they are borrowing money overseas at a feverish pace, the Government probably doesn't have the resources to acquire the land on which Highway 2000 will be built, or to buy land in its surrounding areas. Were I an international bidder however, putting up hard cash to build this highway, I would expect the land to be thrown in by Government at minimal cost if any, as part of the deal.
Should such a deal be done, however, this would mean that the guys who are getting the project would not only own the land for the highway, but choice surrounding territory. If they are smart then they would presumably put in infrastructure, sell these thousands of acres in the future as developed lots, and Jamaica would owe its soul to that company store.
I don't remember when last the NIF published its financial Statements. One thing is certain, however, it is growing faster than even they anticipated. But this is our money, not the Government's. All those billions upon billions of dollars belong to the working people of this country who are paying or have paid, money into it every single month of their working lives.
Can Dr. Davies confirm that feasibility studies have been done, and are available to multilateral lending agencies, which demonstrate that neither the volume of traffic nor personal income exists in Jamaica to make Highway 2000 financially feasible?
If this is true, then not even 35 years will be able to make good the so-called soft loans from the nation's public and private pension funds.
Disgrace
If that money in the NIF and LoJ is burning a hole in the Government's pocket, so anxious are they to blow it, then pay a decent pension at last to the hundreds of thousands of pensioners who have given their lives to this country. We're talking about people who, for example, worked in various capacities in the Government's service for 40 years, and go to the post office every month to collect $200 or $800 a fortnight. This is a human disgrace in need of urgent financial remedy.
Instead our pension funds may be used to create, in the end, what will only be greater national disgrace and scandal by investing them in Highway 2000.
Whose scheme is this? Prime Minister P.J. Patterson's, who always wanted to be known as the Prime Minister who gave away the most land? I thought the land was to be distributed to needy and hard-working Jamaicans, not overseas multinational corporations. This now adds a new dimension in meaning to the people that the People's National Party puts first. Because as Shaggy might now say "It isn't us".
Does Jamaica even need a Highway 2000? If Mr. Patterson were really concerned about proper public transportation and safe roadways he would simply restore the railway, its equipment, buildings and lands which are already in the hands of the Jamaican Government. And rotting in them.
Instead, there is major mischief afoot, dereliction of fiduciary duty to the citizens of this country, and financial disaster brewing more monumental than any that has gone before.
Then we will all appreciate the madman who told an angry bus driver that almost ran him over "Cho, yu jus' vex because you not mad like me."
