Successive administrations have long bemoaned that onerous bureaucracy is one of the major impediments to investment in Jamaica but still nothing is done to redress this situation. The president of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC) Milton Samuda believes that it is time to address this debilitating bureaucracy right now if the country is serious about attracting investment.

Speaking with Caribbean Business Report from Kingston earlier this week Samuda said: “The Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce Karl Samuda himself has proclaimed on a number of occasions that bureaucracy in this country is a thorn in the side of what the government is trying to achieve. We have now passed the stage of perpetually talking about it; the government now has to deal with this on an implementation level and set the tone. When you have inexplicable delays on investment projects that require urgent attention it sets the tone for delays at the lower levels.

“I don’t know what the delay is for not granting approval to REDjet to come into Jamaica and why the Digicel/Claro deal is constantly being put on the back burner. This simply serves to make an investor anxious, not to mention the fact that it proves costly.”

The investors behind REDJet have been seeking to enter the Jamaican market from as far back as 2007. At that time it was felt that it would be a competitor to Air Jamaica, the national carrier the government was looking to divest. Caribbean Airlines eventually acquired Air Jamaica, with REDjet’s investors led by Ian Burns setting up shop in Barbados. This year REDjet announced flights from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago,Barbados and Guyana but has met with stiff resistance in both Trinidad& Tobago and Jamaica who are now raising safety issues as a cause for concern. After a protracted period, the matter is heading toward a resolution sometime in the near future.

In March of this year mobile telephone company, Claro, announced that it would be selling its Jamaican operations to Digicel and that the deal subject to regulatory approval and government satisfaction, would be completed some time in June. While technically this deal cannot be rendered null and void by the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), the government is still required to give it its sign of approval but to date the government is yet to arrive at a decision and has not familiarised itself with the relevant documentation. So in effect at this point the deal lies in abeyance awaiting the government’s thumbs up or thumbs down, despite assurances that the government would look into the matter in a timely fashion.

Samuda believes that although procedures for investments in Jamaica must be adhered to and the proper protocols observed, those procedures should be expeditiously done so you don’t have an investor endlessly waiting for a decision in what is supposed to be an investor-friendly country.

“You keep hearing that this Digicel/Claro deal is under review, but Digicel’s senior executive team can’t get any news as to what is happening. It sends a very bad message to investors looking to come into Jamaica. It must be noted that this is coming on the heels of how long it took to divest the sugar estates and Air Jamaica. Now, I am not saying these are simple things – we know they can be complicated; nevertheless there must be a degree of urgency driving bringing these projects to fruition.

At the JCC we have endeavoured not to simply just talk about this; rather we have partnered with USAID to come up with the Development Approval Centre, a one-stop-shop where investors can go to one place to get the required permits and such, instead of going to many different agencies. We have been very supportive of the measures suggested to simplify the collection of taxes. You want to give credit where credit is due, but the simple fact is that is just one of the many things that have to be done to make Jamaica an investor-friendly and business-oriented country. If we are serious about being a country looking to attract investment, one of the simple things we can do is to make decisions quickly.”

The Development Approval Centre is supposed to make sure everything is approved within 90 days. The JCC boss is of the view that this should transpire for all investment ventures. It is here that he sees the importance of acting expeditiously. He points to a statutory provision in one of the Latin American countries that stipulates that if an application meets with the statutory requirements, it will be deemed approved if it has not been dealt with in a prescribed time period. Here he thinks the Prime Minister can apply this in a local legislative context. It would not be simply the case that everything can be approved but rather the application can meet the minimum requirements. If the state has an objection, it must say so within the time frame.

“When people are talking about public sector reform, invariably they are referring to job numbers, eliminating duplication wages and salaries. Those things are important but public sector reform must also adopt a new mindset where it views itself as a facilitating agency. Too many pockets of it are like stumbling blocks and impediments. No one is saying one should not be vigilant when going about their work, but all too often it is not within the framework of facilitating an investor. The entire approach and mindset has to change in Jamaica if we are going to seriously attract investment into this country. No one coming here wants to be strangled by bureaucracy, a lack of transparency and an unwillingness to expedite a project.”

“I have had this discussion with Prime Ministers PJ Patterson, Portia Simpson Miller and Bruce Golding. Government has viewed the private sector almost as homogeneously dishonest and therefore all the administrative requirements, legislative hurdles and regulations are designed to catch people doing things. Therefore if the approval needed requires two steps you then put in ten steps to stop any shady dealings. What the government should in fact be doing is leave it at the two forms instead of the 20 and then the money you save from reducing the bureaucracy you put into other good use including detection and punishment.”

According to Samuda, who is also a lawyer, exporters claim that as a result of the bureaucracy, it is harder to export something that is going to earn foreign exchange and maintain jobs than it is to import something, yet we proclaim that we are going the route of export-led growth.

“If we are serious about growing the economy by export-led measures then we have to look at the mechanism involved in facilitating exports and make them transparent, quick and legal, obviously, but you need to take the bureaucracy out of it. There has been enough talk about this, we now have to move to targeted action,” declared the president of the JCC.