THE PLANNING Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) said that the Jamaican economy had declined by 3.9 per cent between April and June this year and should show the same decline between July and September. The Dominican Republic (DR) next door reports signs of economic recovery with 1.4 per cent growth in the first half of this year. The investment house, JP Morgan is now anticipating two per cent growth for the year for the DR. Cuba, another neighbour, has downgraded its forecast for growth but still expects growth of 1.7 per cent for the year. What are these countries doing that we are not?

I believe they are practising self-reliance better than we are. In fact, because of our laissez-faire attitude to governance we are not practising self-reliance at all. Self-reliance simply means using more of our resources for ourselves. We must practise self-reliance with efficiency, equity and sustainability. Cuba has acknowledged that it has an efficiency problem. The Dominican Republic has an equity problem. We have a bit of all. Signs of our problems are dependency, debt, low productivity and inequality.

Abundance of resources

The common denominator for addressing all of these is productive resource use and getting over resource constraints with science and technology. We have an abundance of resources that we can use, especially if we think of resources in non-traditional ways.

Wind. We have wind and today's wind technology allows us to buy unassembled windmills with which we can generate renewable energy at competitive prices in just a few months. There are companies in this business that would build windmills on people's land/farms and provide power for free and even some of the profits in exchange.

Land. Organic and natural crops now earn more than US$300 million a year for the Dominican Republic and create 30,000 jobs directly and indirectly. The DR has put 2.3 million square metres of greenhouses into production, most of this in just the last five years. Some 276,500 square metres of greenhouses were put in just this year by the agricultural ministry. Cuba has put 1.7 million acres of land into production in the past two years.

This is the scale of agricultural planning we need from our agriculture ministry. The natural foods and organic market in the United States (US) is worth US$40 billion a year. We could be earning what we are hoping to borrow from the IMF from this alone.

Sun. We will be having a renewable energy forum in Montego Bay in October. Speakers will include some who have revolutionised solar energy in the US coming from the biggest solar energy company in the world. Some reports say that by 2010 companies will be able to achieve grid parity by producing solar power at the cost of, or even cheaper than, electricity from the national grid. This is the S&T breakthrough everybody has been waiting for.

Space. Some countries can explore space, others can exploit space. The much-heralded 3G technology will help video broadcast and data intensive services such as stock transactions, e-learning and telemedicine through wireless communications. This is turning space into a vital business resource. Licences can fetch hundreds of millions and spawn business earning hundreds of millions more, such as from telemedicine.

Water. The DR has just opened a hydroelectric plant that will save the country 315,000 barrels of oil a year. It will sell US$24 million worth of energy a year to pay back the loan of US$200 million. We seem to have forgotten that we also have a 20-mile territorial sea in which we can fish and access marine resources. When we don't our fishermen are reduced to the ganja-for-guns trade. We need a serious fishing industry though.

Labour. The DR is opening 14 new free zones this year. They will produce 22 different kinds of products. They are even considering trading these products for Venezuelan crude under PetroCaribe to save foreign exchange. These products range from footwear, caps, butter, cooking oil, mosquito nets and textiles. When last have we opened a free zone?

Ingenuity. Our own scientist, the late T.P. Lecky, used genetic science in the 1950s to create the basis for scientific agriculture. This is now a very lucrative global business. But we haven't built the industry that would combine crops and livestock to provide energy, transport, animal and vegetable products to be the backbone of the rural Jamaican family, as Dr Lecky had in mind. Much of our science has been ignored or underutilised. The biogas plants developed by the Scientific Research Council are a case in point.

None of these even include our cultural industries, those that rely more directly on the talents of our people. Yet, we say our people are our greatest resource. Usain Bolt is the biggest (sports) personality in the world right now. Our athletes in Berlin have confirmed the greatness they displayed in Beijing. Tyson Gay says he listens to reggae and some dancehall. We produce fashions and models of international fame. These are cultural resources. We could still get billions more from them if they were organised as global industries. In many ways, Jamaica has more than Cuba and the DR but they seem to be better organised for business.

Governance as a resource

They have governments that have been more realistic about the global crisis, more proactive in dealing with it, more experienced for managing people and institutions, and have leveraged international partners better. It is ironic that a communist party government has privatised vastly more land to family farms and cooperatives in the last two years than has a government, like that of Jamaica, which believes in the private market and private property.

Cuba and the DR also have more effective mass institutions. Cuba's party is a mass mobilisation party. Cuba and the DR have more effective local government systems. In Jamaica, we have abolished our local government ministry instead of, say, using it to drive the productive use of land sitting idly in the hands of local authorities, or using parish development committees to implement plans for production. Cuba's combination of military efficiency and discipline with party mobilisation and consultation gives it the model it needs for crisis management. Jamaica's ruling party's newly found money for winning elections has not been matched by the money for organising production.

The Jamaican government lacks the experience of administration, credibility of budget, organisation of government, and discipline of leadership, especially for these times. Cuba limits travel by government delegations. Our officials are off to every sports meet. Cuba is well known for its mass rallies. The DR held a summit for 'National Unity in the Face of the World Crisis' in January to talk about corruption, rising public expenditures, the global economic crisis, crime and violence and export competitiveness. We have had no such national conversation with our people. We cannot build or nurture partnerships for debt management.

The system of governance is a great resource if we use it well. We have not got our system of governance and leadership right, and if we don't we won't get the mobilisation of our other resources right either. For example, it is for that reason why Cuba is the only country in the world that has developed an extensive state-supported infrastructure to support urban food production.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com