Quite rightly, yesterday’s Observer editorial strongly supported recent calls to “take back Jamaica”. The theme of today’s Annual Economic Forum “Beyond Crime And Corruption To Growth: Practical Lessons From Colombia”, hosted by The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), could not be more timely, as Columbia has also faced the challenge of attracting foreign direct investment in a high crime environment. The keynote speaker, Virgilio Barco Isakson, is Executive Director of “Invest In Bogota”, a private-public partnership between the Bogotá City Government and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce.

In March of this year, the PSOJ’s trade manager, Omar Chedda, visited Columbia as part of an Inter-American Development Bank sponsored study tour.

In a note on the trip entitled “Lessons from Columbia”, Chedda observes that Colombia has clear similarities with Jamaica, having experienced decades of instability from internecine warfare arising out of political divisions, which, like Jamaica, later degenerated into violence connected to drug trafficking. Columbia’s political war, known as “La Violencia” actually began in 1948. Interestingly, at a recent police briefing, one of the participants observed that as an army officer, he had first gone to look for guns in Denham Town in 1966 in the run up to Jamaica’s 1967 election.

Columbia’s turning point was the election of President Alvaro Uribe in 2002. Under his decisive leadership, Columbia achieved a dramatic improvement in national security. Combined with an improvement in competitiveness, this enabled Columbia to achieve a sharp increase in its average GDP growth rate to just under 6% between 2002 to 2007.

Uribe undertook a concerted effort to rebuild Columbia’s badly damaged “social capital, travelling to remote villages in the farthest regions of the country to listen to the concerns of the ordinary Colombians. Colombia’s capital, Bogota, was once among the world’s most violent cities, with homicide rates on par with Jamaica. Many pessimists at the time suggested that Bogotá’s downward spiral was irreversible because a culture of lawlessness had taken over the city. Nevertheless, due to effective and honest political leadership, and a commitment to root out corruption, homicide rates dropped dramatically. Bogota’s leadership also took measures to strengthen trust in social institutions by ensuring that state resources were not used in a partisan manner, establishing effective local government, and improving the city’s transportation infrastructure.

In a Tuesday Breakfast Club interview, IDB mission head Gerard Johnson made the important point that Jamaica required a radical new approach to effective “governance”, as decades of social intervention had failed to stop the growth in informality. For example, he argues that the Constituency Development Fund perpetuates a paternalistic “don-like” relationship with constituents, and should either terminated or programmed by local residents.

Johnson argues that there are at least four key interventions, without which the usual social intervention strategies won’t work.

Firstly, he believes that any investment in improving the built environment in informal communities must tackle the ownership of property. The Government could demarcate an area in which it takes ownership of all properties with disputed or unknown title ownership, indemnifying valid owners who show up after the deadline. They would then sell the plots, usher in a new era of formal property ownership.

Secondly, residents must pay for utilities e.g. electricity, as uncollected rates reinforces informality and the communities separation from the rest of the country. If some residents can’t afford the rates, then the safety net should be used to help them do so rather than frustrate normal governance.

Thirdly, sustainable job creation is key. Vocational training is wasted unless there is a job waiting at the end of the training. In the long term, it is only through forging partnerships with the private sector that the government can provide sustainable jobs. For example, Jamaica’s premier coffee exporter was induced to move their bean processing plant from the mountains to downtown where they employ over 500 “unemployable” women from Tivoli. This was achieved by giving them a reduced lease on factory space owned by the government.

Finally, according to Johnson, as a matter of priority, the “quick and sure” justice of the informal system must be replaced by the formal police and justice system.

For well over a decade, Jamaica has sought to establish a “Social Partnership” as a problem solving mechanism for tackling our economic and crime problems. The goal should be the halving of crime, particularly murder, and an economic growth target of 6% of GNP, as was achieved in Columbia (admittedly during a world economic boom). Now is the time for the key social partners to achieve an actionable agreement, with a focus on decisive leadership, action and implementation.