Editors' Forum: Bureaucracy, major handicap to business
Al Edwards, Business Co-ordinator

Photographer: Winston Sill From left: Gordon Arnold, John Issa, Audrey Marks, Oliver Clarke, Peter Moses, Dr. Marshall Hall and Keith Duncan.

The Forum was chaired by the Gleaner's Managing Director Oliver Clarke.

In attendance were: Chairman of SuperClubs, John Issa; President and Chief Executive Officer of Manufacturers Sigma Merchant Bank, Peter Melhado; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Grace Kennedy & Company, Douglas Orane; Managing Director of National Fuels and Lubricants, Roy D'Cambre; Chief Operating Officer, Digicel, Seamus Lynch; Chief Executive Officer, Island Grill, Thalia Lyn ; Western Caribbean General Manager for Shell, Mario Vulinovitch; Managing Director, Paymaster Jamaica Limited, Audrey Marks; Managing Director, NCB, Aubyn Hill; Managing Director of Jamaica Producers, Marshall Hall; Country Corporate Director, Citibank NA, Peter Moses; General Manager, Globe Insurance, Gordon Arnold; President, Jamaica Manufacturers Association, Clarence Clarke; Managing Director, SuperPlus, Wayne Chen; Deputy Managing Director, Jamaica Money Market Brokers, Keith Duncan and President of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, Michael Ammar Jr.

Many of the participants identified bureaucracy as a debilitating factor in conducting business in Jamaica and said that the next Government should apply itself to addressing this issue.

Today, Sunday Business focuses on what the country's business leaders had to say on the subject and highlight prescriptions for cutting through the red tape and spurring growth in the economy

Chairman: Let's take the issue of bureaucracy, everybody says bureaucracy is too great. Now what can the business community do to focus on what is needed to make changes. I thought a very interesting mechanism was what you had set up, Peter (Moses), with the Government which was the MOU.

Mr. Moses: Well, I thought it was very useful, it basically came out of a meeting with the Prime Minister, where we agreed that we would ­ you know - it was sort of like very reminiscent of what we are doing here. It was agreed that the business community would provide a number of areas of concerns where we felt that efficiency and bureaucracy were preventing investments and businesses from expanding in Jamaica and we put out a challenge to the business community to list all these things, and we got about 400 different areas and we sort of classified all of them into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that the Government and private sector and the then Minister of Trade and Industry would meet on a monthly basis to go through the action items and all of these various things that were identified. I am going to be very honest with you, I think the Government side took it very seriously, I was very impressed with how serious they took it. To be very frank with you, brutally frank, I think we (the private sector) let it go, I think we started to not be at the table, we stopped holding them accountable and then the meetings started not to be monthly anymore.

Chairman: What would you do specifically to reduce bureaucracy, how would it go? Roy?

Mr. D'Cambre: I am not troubled by it, you know these gentlemen probably have more experience; they have made it difficult so I buy a man, simple as that, I am being honest.

Chairman: You are sure you want to be on the record?

Mr. D'Cambre: It doesn't matter to me, it's the only way I am going to get efficiency, I want my trailer and I want it now.

Chairman: Thalia?

Mrs. Lyn: Cut the bureaucracy is so that we can see more growth. I shouldn't have a trailer sitting on the wharf for a month, too much bureaucracy in the whole system and it's at all levels and we are afraid to speak out, me included, because I have to go back to the same people.

Mr. Issa: One way of solving that is, if we could get it accepted as a policy of law; if you apply to have something done and if it isn't approved or refused within so many days, it is automatically approved, and you know, if it is refused, then there is a procedure that must take place in so many days and you force some deadline.

Chairman: Marshall, how do you deal with bureaucracy?

Dr. Hall: I still think, the people who work in the Government are efficient at what they are asked to be efficient at, and I think in the case of say the Customs they are really asked to stop contraband, they are not asked to facilitate growth, they are not asked to welcome people, they are asked to stop contraband and therefore their mission in life is to find contraband and that permeates itself.

Mr. Chen: Can I interject here. The Government had stated its intention from back in the mid 90s. Contrary to many of these operational things, have we been monitoring that stated intention to see that these executives have become operational in the time-frame that they originally set out?

Chairman: Who does the monitoring?

Mr. Chen: Back to the PSOJ and the MOU, there was a little mea culpa back there, but rather than trying to reinvent the wheel each time we sit down and have lunch, wouldn't it be better to look back on things we had agreed on seven, eight years ago and get them back on track?

Chairman: None of the private sector organisations really have the resources to pay sustained attention to a number of these detailed issues here. The monitoring, the question is who does that?

Mr. Issa: Is it because the attention needs to be for such a lengthy period?

Chairman: Let's take the case of bureaucracy, why is it the downtown people don't mobilise around it and do something? You are pressuring to doing it but the people who have the responsibility to fix downtown don't seem able to act.

Mr. Ammar: The whole Local Government structure is archaic. There is no leadership at the local level. A city the size of Kingston needs to be run like any big city in the United States. I mean, Kingston has a population almost the size of Boston. Back to the bureaucracy issue, what we have actually started to do at the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, and I think it is something we should expand, ask the whole private sector; we are actually doing now an analysis of where the blocks in the system occur, and then we are going to be doing a whole programme to try and lobby Government to move those blocks. I would be happy to involve everyone, the rest of the private sector, to do it.

Mr. Hill: Just to take on what Wayne (Chen) said about the executive agency, I had to go through an agency run by Pat Holness because I was overseas and I was very impressed. That's the Registrar General. That's a very mundane sort of thing, but for that to be turned into a business that works well, you can actually get it done well and also ask people to pay for it.

I need to tie though what Michael Ammar has said about downtown. You mentioned Boston, I remember I was in Boston in the 70s when the Rolls Company completely gentrified Vanhill Hall and it wasn't done by the equivalent of the KSAC in Boston, it was businessmen who got the Rolls Company together and said we are going to gentrify the harbour and Boston. I think it's amazing if you look at leadership, and this is not because I am with NCB, but because maybe I am - take the approach that Michael Lee Chin is saying. Michael could come back here and say look, I am going to run for Government or Michael could come back and say look I am going to invest in a business, let's try and see how many Jamaicans we can train, how efficient we can deal with it. I would suggest Mike, if we look at the executive agency approach, don't worry to recreate it. Go and study some other places like for instance a city state like Dubai where Sheik Mohammed has made that place efficient. You walk into that place to get a paper, you pay for it, you know the price, it's set. He (the Sheik) himself goes to those places and checks it. I am not sure Ministers do that here, I am still new. So you need to tie what you are saying and what Wayne is saying into executive agencies and also get businessmen to lead. Downtown can be done by businessmen, put a corporation together.

Mr. Arnold: We have been talking about bureaucracy in this country from I have been a teenager, and it continues and we pass through different Governments and nothing happens.

Chairman: It grows?

Mr. Arnold: It grows, it only grows. Obviously there is not the will. There is no pressure, not sufficient pressure put on people who make the difference to make it happen. The civil service is told this is the way you do things or the consequences are this.

Chairman: What's the point?

Mr. Arnold: I am saying that we have got to put pressure on the people to make sure it happens, we all want it to happen.

Chairman: Who puts pressure on whom?

Mr. Arnold: I believe the private sector has to put the pressure on.

Crime

Chairman: I want to move to the issue of crime. Roy, what would you do about crime?

Mr. D'Cambre: I would replace the first top ten posts in the police force with some foreign white people. That's the first thing. I am serious, I am not joking.

Chairman: Are you on the record?

Mr. D'Cambre: Yes

Mr. Clarke: Okay, what's your second step?

Mr. D'Cambre: From the top down white people, foreigners.

Chairman: After that ?

Mr. D'Cambre: We get some apprentices for each position and we train them, that's the only way.

Mr. Hill: Jamaicans as apprentices?

Mr. D'Cambre: Yes. We are all apprentices right now.

Chairman: Marshall, what's your view on crime?

Mr. Hall: We have a culture of corruption. I don't know if I am stepping on anybody's toes but when I hear what we must do is give MPs more money, to me that is sounding like we are encouraging another set up on crime. Crime is endemic in the system and it goes back to efficiency, it goes back to the justice system, it goes back to prosecution.

Chairman: What are your recommendations?

Mr. Hall: You have to find a way to make it worthwhile so that witnesses tell the truth, whether it's protection, whether it's a system which puts them in a witness protection programme, I don't know what it is, I don't really have any simple answers because I don't think it is that simple, but I do know we have a culture of corruption.

Chairman: Keith, what would you do about crime?

Mr. Duncan: I think it really needs to be looked at in a short-term perspective. You need to be, I guess, a bit draconian, I would say. However, it is not a short-term problem, it's going to take long-term solutions to fix crime. It's going to take creating hope, that I can build a future, I don't need to go into crime, I can get a job. Now how do you go about that? By creating hope through growth. How do we get to growth, the critical question here now? If we don't as an economy start growing within the next couple of years ... For crime we need to get the professionals in to do a good job.

Ms. Marks: I have three simple things concerning crime. Get the street boys away from the traffic lights. Get some working court infrastructure and put some emphasis on street lights. Just walking from the Pegasus to the top of Knutsford Boulevard is a major feat and the same thing goes for Montego Bay which is one of our major tourist areas. I think a decision has to be taken on what we are going to do about the narco dollar and the underground economy . I think we are aware that it is there and no serious decision-making is going on in that respect.

Growth and job creation

Chairman: I want to deal with two topics now, growth and the need for job creation. What do we need to do to achieve that.

Mr. Melhado: What I think we can say is that if we examine what has gone on objectively over the last five years, I don't think the prescriptions that we have employed have translated into growth. Somebody gave me an analogy that I found quite interesting, that you kind of take a gamble, which is what we have done. You have to slot monetary policies somehow. You know, stability for what it's worth is not sustainable.

Mr. Issa: What do you estimate is the percentage of waste in Government expenditure?

Mr. Melhado: I think that's been overtaken, because with the paradigm we are in that's almost irrelevant. If we talk about moving the primary surplus from 12 to 13 or to 14 and you compare that to a debt stock you are shouting in the wind, it's just irrelevant.

Mr. Issa: I was very pleased to see that the IMF is going to set up some kind of Chapter 11 recommendations, bankruptcy procedures, because we then need to declare bankruptcy and renegotiate our debt.

Mr. Melhado: You change the monetary stance. You have to in my view come off the inflation/foreign exchange stability side and you have to look at trying to induce some growth.

Chairman: Wayne, what would you do to achieve growth.

Mr. Chen: We have a couple of challenges coming. Obviously we have the opening up of the Free Trade Area of the Americas which should happen under this current and next administration. Whoever takes office on the 17th of October has these responses to formulate. I notice that it's Number 5 in the PNP's agenda, in how they divided their manifesto. Our challenge, and Jamaica has a unique opportunity here, is how do we look beyond island Jamaica into a much wider Jamaica, integrating, and it is in many ways integrated in our local economy, but it has not been done in an orderly or structured way. How do we integrate a wealthy Jamaica which exist outside into what exist here, to lift us up so when that day comes.

Chairman: How do we do that?

Mr. Chen: We have the cultural side, we have the language tie, we have the family tie, it means all the things we have said earlier, lowering crime, eliminating bureaucracy, building up the infrastructure, whether it be telecoms, roads, whatever, making Jamaica an attractive place that people can inter-travel between overseas Jamaica and local Jamaica, invest between overseas Jamaica and local Jamaica.

Chairman: Let me bring in Douglas. Douglas what are you going to do to get growth?

Mr. Orane: Jobs, I would build on what Wayne has said. The Jamaican economy is vastly larger than what we think it is, and the reason is that there are two million Jamaicans living abroad who earn approximately ten times per capita more than the two and a half million here. Therefore, if you are to use traditional measures we would have to say that this economy would have collapsed long ago. What instead is happening is that we are really owning a microcosm of the total economy. What we need to do is to formalise those links in every way we possibly can and in time that should address our trade policy, it should address our policy negotiating with the FTAA, WTO and CARICOM, to make sure that all the things we need to integrate the Jamaican nation together - we have four and a half million people worldwide who act as one economic unit - who are not severed by the barriers that I see emerging, that will prevent us from doing that after 2005.

We should be able to sell all the goods and services that our Jamaican company sells in Jamaica; we should be able to sell them; whatever they are, in the United States, Canada and the UK and that applies to financial services as well, because I see a world coming where we are going to have an invasion of incoming investors who we don't even know are competing with us, but we won't be able to compete with them on their own turf.

Chairman: Mario, what do we do to get jobs?

Mr. Vulinovitch: I come from a country not too dissimilar to Jamaica.

Chairman: Where do you come from?

Mr. Vulinovich: I come from a nation called New Zealand, and being small it is a bit of a roller coaster ride. But the Government put in place a couple of things which we talked about like reducing bureaucracy. But I think for a small country one of the benefits we can get is from IT capability and implementation... You can pick out new technology and make everybody IT capable, in terms of coming from a cash society to more of a card society. I also think you have got the biggest market, America very close. We need to find some sort of niche and decide what is it that we want to do and how we do that.

Chairman: Aubyn

Mr. Hill: Send all our ministers to Hong Kong to see how free trade works

Mr. Issa: And that's on the record?

Mr. Hill: I did say Hong Kong, for the record.