This past week Prime Minister Bruce Golding was the keynote speaker at the dedication of the new headquarters of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) and made worthy suggestions about the kinds of analyses that ought to concentrate the minds of the agency's researchers and technocrats.

Of course, we do not believe that, in the current global context, he needed to tell Dr Wesley Hughes and his PIOJ team that the spiralling food prices and rocketing cost of oil should be subject of attention and should inform the policy prescriptions they offer the government. The competence of the PIOJ over half of a century, speaks for itself; most of the times.

Last week's function represents the culmination of a rare circumstance of the judgement of the PIOJ being distinctly flawed and of the potentially bad signal being sent by Mr Golding to the public bureaucracy.

Dedicated building

The building which was dedicated is the one on Oxford Road in New Kingston which used to be occupied by the consular section of the US embassy in Jamaica. It used to be owned by one of the financial companies that collapsed in the sector's melt-down of the 1990s and thus became one of the portfolio of non-performing assets acquired by FINSAC, the vehicle used by the government to bail out the sector.

Perhaps three years ago, the PIOJ muscled out a private sector competitor to acquire the building, spending more than $200 million on the purchase and perhaps another $100 million or so on its refurbishment. The acquisition should not have been allowed and the PIOJ ought not to have moved in. No one should be impressed by any argument from the PIOJ that it used its own money, whether raised by foreign donors or wise investments, for the purchase. A government agency, involved in analysis and research should not have been allowed to tussle with and crowd out private enterprise in such an acquisition. But that is the lesser of our arguments on this issue.

We often, in these columns, express our concern and regret at the migration of government ministries and agencies uptown, from the old, downtown section of Kingston which has been left to become gritty and decayed and overwhelmed with criminality and violence. Yet downtown, with its waterfront of the world's seventh largest natural harbour should perhaps be among the most sought after real estate in Jamaica.

The PIOJ used to be downtown, in the old Oceana hotel, then it found a reason to join the trek to New Kingston, eventually to its well-appointed Oxford Road complex. On the other side of Oxford Road, the EX-IM Bank, which used to be on Duke Street, downtown, is paying rent for the privilege of being uptown. It was recently looking for property to buy.

These agencies are not unique. The government pays hundreds of millions annually on rent to accommodate the New Kingston/uptown ambitions of its ministries and agencies, while acreages of space remain unoccupied downtown. Between the Urban Development Corporation's main complex and the Post Office's Central Sorting Office, 150 square feet is readily identifiable.

Mr Golding announced a moratorium on the migration uptown. We doubt it is being enforced and that will be more difficult when the Prime Minister appears to give his imprimatur to the PIOJ's trek to New Kingston.