Robert Buddan, Contributor
ON NOVEMBER 23 and 24, the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) will be celebrating its 50th anniversary with a planning conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston.
Speakers will, justifiably, include the director-general of the PIOJ, Dr. Wesley Hughes, Ambassador Richard Bernal, and former Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Edward Seaga, among others.
Planning agencies are obviously functional necessities for modern governments, but when the Central Planning Unit, forerunner to the PIOJ, was established in 1955, it represented a fundamental break between the prevailing colonial philosophy and the emerging nationalist governments in decolonising Jamaica.
NO VISION FOR JAMAICA
Plainly put, the colonial philosophy was that Jamaicans did not count.
Colonial government had no planning agency, did no surveys of the social and living conditions of Jamaicans, and had no knowledge of how many Jamaicans were poor, what the distribution of income was, how many were unemployed, what the health, educational, and labour status of Jamaicans was among different age groups, and between men and women.
It, therefore, could not plan and in fact it had no intention to do so because it had no vision for Jamaica.
The colonial government represented the classic case of bad governance.
In the 1940s, the British did produce a '10-year plan for the development of Jamaica' to cover 1946 to 1956.
However, this plan only came about after the islandwide riots of the 1930s and was made by people who had no experience in planning, no research basis on which to plan and no policy and administrative infrastructure to implement plans.
In 1952, Governor Foote turned to the newly formed World Bank asking it to undertake a financial and economic survey of Jamaica.
In 1955, a visiting researcher from London put together a publication that measured 'the levels of living' of Jamaicans.
Generally, the limited information from national income statistics and the Handbook of Jamaica were never enough. Colonial governments were guessing their way through and doing so badly.
ERA OF PLANNING
The mid-1950s was a watershed for how Jamaica was to be governed.
The People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) had campaigned on plans for agricultural, labour, industrial and social reforms in the 1944 elections.
However, although the JLP became the majority party up to 1955, it did not enjoy the degree of executive control that would have enabled it to do all that it wanted.
This is why the PNP's insistence on self-government from the outset was so important. When it formed the majority in the 1955 elections, it was able to push for greater executive authority and more power to plan for development.
The period 1955 to 1962 was a great foundation period for modern government in Jamaica.
In 1954, the PNP included the idea of planning in its manifesto for the 1955 elections, calling it a 'Plan for Progress'.
This plan included a section on planning 'to carry out a government plan for development'.
As ministers won greater responsibility over policy, government then embarked upon planning for the different social and economic sectors.
MEASURING STATISTICS
By 1955, the Central Planning Unit had been established.
It marked a new philosophy that Jamaicans did count and the planning agency was going to count them up so that the Government would know their living conditions - their cost of living, productivity, and quality of life - for the first time.
Right after winning the 1955 elections, Norman Manley addressed the nation and said the first thing he intended to do was see to the "establishment of a planning department for development purposes in all its aspects."
Manley said: "The Central Planning Organisation of our government must become an immediate reality. It must keep in touch with all the vital statistics of the country - the state of employment, the rate of increase of jobs, the money situation, and so on. It must constantly review the progress of the working departments, of agriculture - of export crops and food production and land use - and it must be in the closest touch with the industrial development programme. You can't plan on the basis of annual reports which are so late that when you get them they have already become history and ceased to be news."
In the mid-1950s, Jamaica was able to produce its first five-year plan and its first 10-year plan at Independence.
Its first five-year plan aimed at creating 150,000 jobs, spending £30 million on development, and raising investments of £50 million.
In the 1958 budget presentation, the Government was able to table for the first time an economic survey reporting on the performance of the economy for the preceeding year. It contained information we now take for granted - trade statistics, money circulation, bank loans and deposits, national income, per capita income and GDP, among other information.
Manley appreciated these developments in the context of Jamaica's colonial status.
He remarked on the fact that Jamaica had never had its own currency, capital market, central bank, and development and planning institutions, but was now rapidly establishing these, a true mark of its movement towards independence.
Indeed by 1959, Jamaica was able to raise funds on the international capital market for the first time, an indication of confidence in its new financial institutions, economic performance, and forward looking development plans.
PLANNING FOR THE MILLENIUM
In 2005, Jamaica finds itself some way through the current phase of planned development based on the National Industrial Policy for 1996-2010.
This plan contains a long-term vision to make Jamaica into a developed country by 2015. This is the most ambitious of all of Jamaica's plans and the philosophy of development is, therefore, dramatically different and bolder than anything before.
At the same time, it comes when markets, globalisation, and a new cycle of destructive weather phenomena make it difficult to predict and plan. We are now planning in an age of greater uncertainty. Countries like Jamaica have pretty much amassed the information they need but have less control over their environments to make planning predictable. Development appears chaotic, short-term, and reactive.
For example, in 2003 Trinidad also announced its goal of becoming a developed country by 2020. That country, buoyed by new gas finds, grand oil and gas investments, and the best prices ever, stands the best chance among CARICOM countries of doing just that.
MOVE TO FAST TRACK
Where is Jamaica by contrast? Recent reports from the PIOJ itself suggests that Jamaica's economy is doing remarkably well considering the bruising and battering from crime, oil, and the weather, but targets for fiscal balancing, revenues, and inflation are off track.
We must now find speed mode to fast track human development and the industrial policy.
The PIOJ does not only collect figures. It uses them to analyse what is working and what is not and gives policy advice. It should advise administrations that human and industrial development are complementary so as the steps down the escalator move more quickly we must step up even faster.
We have to find creative ways to redouble our efforts to meet both the millennium development goals and the goal to becoming a developed country by 2015. The PIOJ has a critical role in getting us there.
You can send your comments to the department of government, University of the West Indies, Mona, at: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
