http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20040926/focus/focus4.html

Kevin O'Brien Chang, Contributor

THE PNP came to power in early 1989, only a few months after Hurricane Gilbert hit the island. With the PNP conference being held in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, let's try and evaluate our situation then and now.

Our comparative health and education figures haven't changed much, while relative per capita GDP has declined slightly. Of course, no one knows how accurately the 'official' income figures capture the Jamaican reality. A popular school of thought says underground remittances and drug trafficking have expanded the black market significantly. Guesstimates range from 40 per cent to 100 per cent of the recorded data, but no one really knows.

The Planning Institute of Jamaica was supposed to conduct a study of our informal economy, but neither the private nor public powers seem too interested in finding out answers that might raise uncomfortable questions. Such as what exactly is the source of all this unrecorded income? Yet, can a country plan properly for the future without knowing its true current situation?

The above phone, electricity and car figures suggest that over the past 15 years the average Jamaican's life has been transformed to a far greater degree than official GDP figures would imply. Our phone access has gone from less than 40 per cent of the world average in 1989 to almost 200 per cent today. Our electricity usage has risen from 25 per cent below the international par to roughly 10 per cent above. The car data is less clear, but a more than 250 per cent per capita increase confirms the impression that far more Jamaicans have access to cars today than ever before.

I returned to Jamaica in May 1989 after studying in Canada and remember how difficult it was to get a car import license. Indeed, my father's store was still using a 1973 Volvo for business transport because a newer one had been unattainable without 'connections'. You heard stories about Trade Board licence buying scandals and scams such as cars being cut in two and brought in separately as parts and then welded back together.

Friends even urged me to get returning resident car licences for my six sisters in Canada and then sell them at a 100 per cent profit. The roads then were filled with old Ladas ­ and when last did you see a 'Ladamassee'? It's all very distant from today's instant buy and sell deportee car lots. In personal transportation terms most Jamaicans are unquestionably far better off now than then.

PHONE REVOLUTION

Yet, the car transformation pales in comparison to the phone revolution. The figures speak for themselves. Chatting is Jamaica's favourite ­ or at a minimum our second favourite ­ occupation. In foreign, gossiping is reckoned to be a mostly female pastime, but males here seem to enjoy 'labrishing' as much as the fairer sex. So while the mobile phone explosion has been startling, given our nature it has not been so surprising.

Minister of Information and Technology Phillip Paulwell once remarked that when he went to telecommunication summits abroad and presented Jamaican figures, other countries often questioned his data. How could a nation that ranks 94th in Purchasing Power Parity Adjusted Gross National Income per person possibly rank in the world top 10 in per capita mobile phone usage? But that is the reality.

Can the PNP claim credit for Jamaicans having so many more cars and phones? Was the main cause not a sharp drop in the real price of cars and mobile phones? Perhaps. Yet, the present government deserves praise for at the very least not standing in the way of progress. For liberalising our transport, telecommunication and utility sectors allowed the masses to fully benefit from technological progress.

It's highly ironic that a party originally established on approved socialist principles should have provided the most liberal and market-oriented government this country has ever known. Indeed, the World Bank Doing Business in 2004 study ranked Jamaica as one of the "Ten Least-Regulated Countries across Doing Business Indicators," stating that ,"Jamaica has aggressively adopted best practice regulation over the last two decades."

Some foolish people tried to discredit this report, as if the World Bank has any reason to be biased for or against a puny country like Jamaica. But in 1989 people smuggled out foreign currency wrapped up in clothes in suitcases. Today wire transfers zip money in both directions. Persons used to get locked up for buying US dollars. Now you have cambios everywhere. Ivory tower intellectuals chatter about the supposed inequities of globalisation. But how many Jamaicans would wish to go back to the tightly controlled regimes of the 1970s and even to an extent the 1980s?

CRIME

But a word to Comrades patting themselves on the back ­ crime. In 1989 Jamaica's murder rate was about twice the U.S.'s. At the end of 2003 it was nearly seven times as great. At current trends, our 2004 homicide rate will probably be about 50 per cent higher than last year's and is close now to being the highest in the world. If the primary job of a government is to establish a monopoly on violence, this PNP regime has failed miserably.

Yet, the only competent judges of the effectiveness of a government are the people over whom it holds sway. And on three occasions ­ 1993, 1997 and 2002 ­ the populace has answered yes to the question "Are you better off than you were when the last election was held?" As a friend jokes, in the past most Jamaicans walked where they wanted to even at night. Today they have to drive through with their windows rolled up.

Jamaica has made the crucial mental transformation from a protectionist minded society to a market and globally oriented one. Because if we want to get richer, and every nation does, history shows that economic liberalisation is the only way to go. But this progress will come to naught if we don't get crime under control. All the cars and phones in the world mean nothing when you're dead.