KINGSTON, Jamaica -- New commercial and high-end condominiums are rising from the dirt, the minimum wage is going up, unemployment is the lowest it’s been in years and tourism — the engine of the economy — is once more booming.
After years of being hobbled by crippling debt, double-digit deficits and negative growth, Jamaica, the largest island in the English-speaking Caribbean, is showing its ability to weather crises — and its hard-won economic stability is getting noticed along with the leadership of its prime minister.
In just the past four months, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and welcomed United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the newly appointed president of the World Bank Group, Ajay Banga, to the island. Banja’s visit, just 12 days into the job, was part of his months-long global tour and the first by a World Bank president in an official capacity in recent times.
And all of it is happening as the country continues to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, whose adverse effects had the economy shrinking by nearly 10% — its largest decline in history.
“We have implemented policies that are on the one hand empowering but on the other hand competitive and efficient,” Holness said in a recent interview with the Miami Herald at his office in Kingston. “We have sought to manage our debt, to bring it down.”
Known for its white sandy beaches, reggae music and world class sprinters, Jamaica had the dubious distinction just a few years ago of being one of the world’s most indebted countries. Its public debt was a record 147% of Gross Domestic Product just a decade ago. Today, with its economy in recovery, its debt at the end of March was 78% of GDP — a feat, Holness says, that “tells the story of our fiscal management.”
“Jamaica is a unique case in the Caribbean because we have owned our problems and shortcomings,” he said. “We start from the position that we cannot borrow our way to development. We start from the position that whatever resources we have, we must manage them efficiently. And for the benefit of the people.”
Jamaica’s ongoing economic transformation — its GDP is projected to grow by 4.3% this year — is not only raising the country’s profile outside of the region but that of Holness. He is quickly emerging, along with Barbados’ Mia Mottley, as a go-to leader on the world stage.
Holness, 50, is the youngest person to become prime minister in Jamaica’s history after he was first appointed to the job in October 2011, and then winning his own mandate in March of 2016. He is a longtime advocate of debt-relief and reform of the global financial system that has shut vulnerable middle-income developing countries like his — considered too rich for grants and too indebted for high-interest loans — out of low-cost financing.
Now with such countries increasingly vulnerable to external economic and environmental shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, their lack of access to financing is getting noticed and calls for reform are getting support.
Leaders like Trudeau, Guterres and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris — who in June met with Caribbean leaders in The Bahamas and announced that the U.S. will lead a diplomatic campaign on multilateral development bank reform to increase access to financing — are all joining the call, and in the process citing Jamaica’s experience and Holness’ leadership. Along with Trudeau, Holness co-chairs the international Financing for Development initiative.
“Mr. Holness has been a champion,” Guterres said during his May visit to the island. “A champion in relation to climate action, and a champion in relation to an effective reformed multilateral financial architecture in the world.”
The visit came days before the G7 summit of industrialized nations in Japan where Guterres called on the world’s wealthiest economies to support him in reforming the international financial system to better support small developing states. It was important for him, he said, to come meet with Holness ahead of the meeting because he and his government had pursued policies “that allowed the country to reduce substantially its dependency in relation to debt.”
‘Transformational’ leader
Damion Blake, a Jamaica-born associate professor of political science at Elon University in North Carolina, said he can see Holness’ international appeal.
“I find him to be a very transformational, steady, forward-looking kind of prime minister who in my view has made Jamaica better internally,” Blake said. “Regionally, he has his hands on the pulse of the Caribbean region; he understands about Caribbean unity and integration and the greater development of the region and I’m very impressed with the ways in which he is dealing from the front on the issues regarding Haiti.”
Historically, the ruling Jamaica Labor Party, which Holness leads, has always been viewed as a conservative entity that thinks more about economics and fiscal prudence than regionalism and integration in the wider Caribbean Community.
“That is something that the People’s National Party has done very well,” Blake said about the current opposition party, the PNP, which Holness first defeated in 2016 to become the first prime minister to be born after Jamaica gained independence from Great Britain in 1962. “I see where Holness is trying to change that image, that narrative around the Jamaica Labor Party.”
“He’s trying to lead a process of transformation, which can be very painful but very important,” Blake said. “He understands regional security and he is positioning himself to be a kind of beacon in the Caribbean space.”
Holness is not without critics even as he enjoys a 6.6% unemployment rate among the country’s 2.8 million residents. Earlier this year, the opposition called for him to step down after a report by the country’s Integrity Commission, which is investigating his finances, suggested he had a potential conflict of interest in the awarding of contracts to a construction company over two decades ago when he served as education minister. Holness, in a statement, said he had never exercised influence on the awarding of the contracts and in the end the director of the public corruption agency ruled Holness would not face charges.
While Holness’ star is rising in North America, given his closeness to Canada and the United States, some regional observers question his commitment to the 15-member Caribbean Community, known as CARICOM, of which Jamaica is a member.
During the administration of President Donald Trump, Holness came under fire when then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chose to travel to Jamaica, rather than Barbados, which was then the chair of CARICOM, to meet with a select group of Caribbean leaders. A year earlier, Holness was among five Caribbean leaders invited to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach County. The visit was viewed by critics as a reward for the leaders’ decision to break with their colleagues and support Trump’s get-tough policy on Venezuela.
“A fundamental principle of our foreign policy is that we must engage,” Holness said, describing Jamaica’s foreign policy approach as “pragmatic.” “And so, I seek to engage as much as possible with issues and leaders to ensure that the best interests of Jamaica and our global interests are advanced. So, whether it is on climate change, whether it is on energy, whether it is on debt, we will engage.”
Jamaica, the leader said, is firmly a democratic country and its principles of democracy are uncompromising.
“The world knows that when Jamaica speaks or when Jamaica takes a position on an issue, it’s a principled one,” Holness added. “And so we can be depended on as fair, unbiased interlocutors.”
Breaking the political impasse in Haiti
Holness offered up Jamaica to serve as a kind of neutral Switzerland in June in Haiti’s protracted political and humanitarian crisis, with some 50 civil society and political leaders gathering in Kingston for three days of talks. By then he was already deeply engaged in helping Haitians find a solution to their worsening crisis.
From the very first high-level call between Trudeau and CARICOM leaders in October, Holness, a diplomatic source said, showed interest in leading a solution. Conversations between him and Trudeau continued with more phone calls and a face-to-face meeting during Trudeau’s attendance at the CARICOM summit in The Bahamas in February.
When fellow Caribbean leaders failed to support a request by Haiti’s caretaker government and the U.N.’s Guterres for the deployment of foreign forces to help the Haiti National Police combat warring gangs, Holness, who two weeks earlier had offered up his country’s military with support from the opposition, wasn’t dissuaded.
Barely back in Jamaica from the Bahamas, he traveled to Haiti onboard Digicel founder Denis O’Brien’s private plane to meet with government and opposition figures, and offered Jamaica as a neutral meeting ground.
“It is, indeed, I think, a great travesty that this country that symbolizes freedom and liberation of the Black struggle, of Black people around the world, that in today’s modern world, it has not taken its true place,” Holness said about Haiti. “It is a country with incredible resources, incredible people. And I think they have the wherewithal, and they have the resources to overcome the problem. I think that a country like Jamaica or any other country in the region, we all have a duty to support Haiti, not to interfere in its business.”
During the Kingston talks, the Haitians in attendance found inspiration in Jamaica and similarities with their own struggle. Poverty in Jamaica is about 23%, with the prosperous and penniless living a short distance from each other. Gangs and guns once ruled electoral outcomes here, but such political rivalries are increasingly becoming legacies of the past.
Holness acknowledges that plenty of work remains to be done, from doing a better job at addressing poverty to tackling Jamaica’s skyhigh crime rate.
“The history of Jamaica has been that the working class, the poor, the marginalized, have not benefited from access; they’ve not benefited from an equitable economic system that focused on their needs. And generally, within the society, there is a feeling now of hardship,” he said.
“People feel that times are difficult. It’s always been a difficult time,” he added. “But I think now that people are seeing that the economy is growing; they’re seeing wages being increased for certain sectors, the question is, what is going to be done for the average person who has been struggling for so long? How do we quickly accelerate this growth in the economy so that the poor can participate in it?”
Turning the progress into prosperity for the poor, and tackling the country’s violent crime problems are currently a major focus, he said.
The crime challenge was driven home recently when an 8-year-old school girl was abducted and murdered. Holness, a father of two and whose wife, Juliet, is also a member of Parliament, described the attack as “very disturbing, very barbaric.”
“There’s no question that our homicide rate is exceptionally high,” he acknowledged, noting that the average for the region is about 16 homicides per 100,000 residents and Jamaica is as high as 40 per 100,000. “Having recognized this issue of fatal violence, which is largely led by organized criminal gangs, we have put in place a violence prevention commission... and they will deliver to us very soon a comprehensive set of policy recommendations to treat this issue of violence.”
That is not the only commission at work.
Holness, who skipped the coronation of King Charles III in May following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, has put in place a committee to reform the country’s constitution, including dropping the British monarch as head of state in much the same fashion that Barbados did in 2021.
Holness, who previously announced that Jamaica was moving on, said “Jamaica’s journey is continuing to its full independence.”
“We have gotten our political and administrative independence; we maintain a connection with the United Kingdom by having a common head of state,” he said, stressing that Jamaica is not currently a subject of the United Kingdom but one of only eight former British colonies in the English-speaking Caribbean paying allegiance to the king. “The journey to a republic is to have our own locally determined and originating head of state.”
The committee, he said, is currently going around the country and engaging the island’s residents.
“I believe that at the end of the process, every Jamaican will appreciate and understand the next phase of our evolution as an independent country.”
