THE ruling People’s National Party (PNP) is confident it will regain lost popularity when employment opportunities start to flow from $20-billion worth of infrastructural projects expected to be implemented over the next five to 10 years.

In the meantime, the party says it’s not worried about its showing in recent public opinion surveys in which it is trailing the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) by seven percentage points, a year after the PNP’s historic fourth consecutive victory in parliamentary elections.

“When all these things begin to kick in, we will see changes in the poll findings,” says Development Minister Dr Paul Robertson. “As the economy begins to gain strength and grow, we expect good prospects in employment,” he tells the Sunday Observer.

Robertson, who last month pipped Roger Clarke for a vice-president post in the party, reeled out an array of projects covering the development of air and seaports, hotels, roads, housing, information technology and mining.

In fact, next Tuesday the Government will sign three contracts totalling more than $250 million to commence the implementation of one such project — the upgrading of the Norman Manley International Airport. The project entails the installation of a new ticketing concourse, the outsourcing of maintenance services for vehicles and equipment, as well as long-term engineering design work.

This airport development project comes on the heels of the divestment this year of the island’s other international airport — Sangster in Montego Bay — to a Canadian-based consortium to upgrade and operate that facility.

Yet another project, the expansion of the Jamalco alumina plant, to produce an additional 250 tonnes of mineral worth US$50 million, is on track to be completed next year. Robertson’s tally also includes the commencement next month of construction of a $5-billion, 3,000-unit housing development in Kingston’s sprawling inner-city.

Robertson indicated the PNP was pinning its hopes on those big-spending projects for a return to favour with the electorate. The recent Stone Polls done for the Observer newspaper found that 29.6 per cent of adults surveyed would vote JLP, compared with 22.5 per cent for the PNP, if an election were called now.

The relatively big drop in popularity only a year after it won the October 16, 2002 general elections, followed by the 11-2 whipping in the local government polls in June this year, is being attributed to the harsh economic environment, the weakening dollar, climbing inflation, a heavy tax burden and the runaway crime rate which have dogged the PNP government.

Business analysts, like Errol Gregory, give the PJ Patterson-led administration points for the rebound in tourism during the last 12 months. He notes that visitor arrivals are on the rise and the sector remains the number one hard currency earner. He also gives the administration points for pushing ahead with the Highway 2000 project.

But tourism apart, there was little else for which the administration could score big, while it awaits the returns from the ambitious infrastructural development programme that was promised in its election manifesto a year ago.

Robertson, a political scientist who spearheaded the PNP’s narrow election victory last October, concedes that “obviously there has been some political fallout due to the austere budget”. And despite being bullish about the country’s economic prospects, he underscores the need to carefully manage the macroeconomic environment, if the intended benefits are to accrue to the country from the planned projects.

One of the economic indicators that the administration is watching is the rate of increase in the general price level. According to the development minister, there has been a “little blip” in the inflation rate, which the Government has successfully kept below double digits for the past seven years. Robertson’s euphemistic “little blip” is a 10-point rise in prices for the 12-month period ending September this year. Government analysts are recasting this to come out at 13 points by end of the financial year.

The rise in the rate of inflation was triggered by a steep decline in the foreign exchange rate during the first quarter of the current financial year. This, in turn, caused the Central Bank to raise interest rates, as well as to use the country’s reserves of hard currency in order to temper the pace of devaluation of the local currency. Increasing the interest rate for Government’s monetary instruments has increased the amount of money the state owes to domestic investors, which has grown by $80 billion over the period July 2002 to July 2003, according to statistics published by the Central Bank.

The high domestic debt is cause for “serious concerns” for international investment advisory houses such as the US-based Bear Stearns. Earlier this month, Gregory Fisher, a spokesman for the firm, pointed to a disturbing 32 per cent ballooning in interest costs between April and July this year.

“Jamaica is holding on, barely, to its fiscal situation and debt dynamics,” he warned, while noting that interest took up 47 per cent of total expenditures and 67 per cent of revenues. “We know of no other country with these ratios,” Fisher said in a brief to clients.

On the plus side, the economist praised the administration for its success at raising additional taxes and showing “considerable fiscal restraint”, although he cautioned that the saving in expenditure was being done by cutting spending on capital projects.

That is a concern not shared by government economist, Dennis Morrison, who argues that the devaluation this year caused a reduction in aggregate expenditure on imported consumer items in favour of capital goods, which positively affects the state of the country’s accounts or balance of payments (BOPs).

Morrison, who is the chief technocrat in the Ministry of Development, concurs with Gregory that the tourism and export sector in general gained from the devaluation of the local currency earlier this year. Both analysts point to the positive findings of a business and consumer survey commissioned by the Jamaica Conference Board, an arm of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce.

The survey, conducted by Professor Richard Curtin, a researcher from the US-based University of Michigan, found consumers and the business sector in Jamaican resort centres having the highest level of positive outlook for the economy. According to Curtin, the survey found that the business sector regarded as positive, the rebound in tourism, the increased competitiveness of exporters and improvement in the economy of the country’s major trading partners.

“While Jamaicans living outside of the tourist and Kingston regions gave less favourable assessments of current economic conditions in the most recent survey, they were just as positive in their outlook for the future,” Curtin reported two weeks ago. He noted that the proportion of respondents who had held a negative view about the economy in the previous quarter had dropped by 20 percentage points in the quarter ending September.

It is to this incipient rebound in consumer and business outlook, anchored by infrastructural projects, that the PNP Government is looking for a reversal in political fortunes.

Robertson notes that the expectation of growth is tempered by concerns about the country’s perennially high crime rate. But that apart, the administration is still gung ho on achieving three per cent growth in the economy this year and beyond.

“Barring some cataclysmic event, the growth target of three per cent is on target,” says a confident Robertson, whose vice-presidential post puts him, though some distance down the line, in the race for party leadership when the time comes.