KINGSTON, Jamaica – In a fiery address to Parliament yesterday, Opposition spokesman on finance Julian Robinson accused the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration of attempting to “rewrite history” by claiming sole credit for the country’s economic stability, asserting that the People’s National Party (PNP) laid the critical foundation during their 2012-2016 tenure.
“Andrew Holness and his government cannot claim paternity for fixing the economy! If they try, they would be getting a jacket!” Robinson declared in colorful parliamentary language. “DNA results would say A NUH FI HIM PICKNEY!”
Robinson’s presentation painted a stark picture of Jamaica’s economic journey, contrasting the JLP’s management from 2007-2011 with the subsequent PNP administration’s reforms. He pointedly noted that the Finance Minister had “conveniently skipped over” the JLP’s earlier governance period in her recent address.
According to Robinson, when the PNP took office in 2012, Jamaica was “on the precipice of an economic collapse” with public debt at an unprecedented 134 percent of GDP, no access to international capital markets, and the central government’s fiscal deficit at 6.2 percent of GDP.
The opposition spokesman detailed how the previous JLP administration had abandoned the IMF’s Stand-By Arrangement in 2011, citing Trevor Alleyne, then IMF mission chief to Jamaica, who told the Financial Times: “They did it without consulting us. That’s when I knew the programme was in trouble.”
This collapse in relations, Robinson argued, led to multilateral organizations including the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and European Union withholding support, further destabilizing Jamaica’s economy.
Robinson credited former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller with leveraging her “international political capital” to secure crucial intervention from the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, particularly Congresswoman Maxine Waters, which he claimed “saved us from total collapse.”
The PNP’s economic management, Robinson asserted, included a challenging debt restructuring, maintaining a 7.5 percent primary budget surplus, and reducing public debt to approximately 120 percent of GDP by the end of their term. He emphasized that his party had enhanced fiscal rules to guarantee prudent fiscal management and supported the creation of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC), which has since evolved into the Independent Fiscal Commission.
“These measures yielded substantial results,” Robinson told Parliament, noting that Jamaica’s fiscal deficit was eliminated, achieving a 0.4% surplus of GDP by FY 2014/15, while the public sector surplus rose to 1.4% of GDP in FY 2015/16.
The opposition spokesman highlighted that inflation dropped to 3.7% in 2015—the lowest rate in nearly five decades—and further eased to 3.1% by February 2016. During this period, Jamaica’s international standing improved dramatically, with Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch all raising the country’s credit rating. Additionally, Jamaica climbed 27 places in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2015 report, moving from 85th to 58th among 189 countries.
Robinson cited international recognition of these achievements, quoting IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde who, during her 2014 visit to Jamaica, described the economic programme’s success as “astonishing” and “a clear change of course,” paying tribute to then-Finance Minister Dr. Peter Phillips and his colleagues.
“When we were being fiscally disciplined, he said we were failing the people’s test,” Robinson said of then-Opposition Leader Holness. “But now they want to say that fiscal discipline can nyam. What can go so?”
Robinson characterized the JLP’s current claims as “textbook choppa behaviour,” accusing them of trying to “scam the truth, chop up the facts, and pass them off as their own.” He concluded by asserting that the PNP “birthed economic stability after the JLP botched attempt at it in 2009” and remains “committed to it in 2025,” vowing to “entrench it so that no one can play with this important foundation for high and sustained economic growth.”
The parliamentary address highlights the ongoing battle for economic credibility between Jamaica’s two major political parties, with the PNP insisting that today’s fiscal stability stems directly from their previous administration’s painful but necessary reforms. WiredJA
