Introduction:
Subsidising the private sector has become a public policy addiction, yet vast gaps remain in our understanding of the political economy of our own society. Take for example, the recent row over the abolition of VAT, in which a higher proportion of ordinary people’s take home pay is spent on the regressive tax than that of the well-paid. Yet, for reasons best known to himself, the governor of the central chose to make his views known while out of the island, and, having done so, declined to enter any serious debate about the sales tax. This contempt for Barbadians is part of the pattern that has seen a massive delegation of politicians, civil servants and business people travelling to China – a country that ten years ago they knew only as the home of Suzie Wong and Kung Fu – In search of the mythical pot of gold at the end of the Oriental rainbow. However, back home, the nation has ground to a halt; people have taken strong positions and every other idea has been blocked out. Of course, there is very little new to say in terms of new ideas, but there is still a lot to fight for, most important of which is the future of our island home.
Strategic Policy-making:
Ideally, government could have avoided going cap in hand to the Chinese, or tolerating a silly alternative by going to the United Arab Emirates as if a Middle Eastern state would look more kindly on Barbados than the Chinese. A more strategic policy, and one better in the long-term, would be to launch massive urban renewal programme covering the two sq. mile area bordered by Bay Street, Jemmott’s Lane, Bay Street and Fairchild Street.
With modern architecturally designed three and four storey buildings, with one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, with court yards and parking facilities, with retail shops, offices, restaurants, a park and bars at street-level, the development would be the biggest and most enterprising capital project since the Deep Water Harbour in the late 1950s. It would be incremental in its execution, going from street to street, with an end date of up to ten years. Such a development would be a win-win for the nation, the policymakers and the families and businesses living within the area. The success of the scheme could also see it expanded to New Orleans, Baxters Road and Tudor Street, Carrington’s Village, Bay Land, the Ivy, and other urban centres. Such a development would be an enormous legacy and a vast improvement in the quality of life and lifestyles of ordinary Barbadians.
Planning Process:
It must be carefully planned since urban renewal must be a key part of a wider government public policy programme, which includes planning, job creation and support for small and medium enterprises. Of all things, it must be participatory, involving all stakeholders, from local residents and businesses, to the police, planning official, utilities, road traffic, education and health authorities, and of all, the opposition political parties; and any existing neighbourhood Watch or residents’ association. It must involve relevant professionals, from architects, civil and structural engineers, builders and property developers and the entertainment industry. All these and more must buy in to the development and claim ownership, so rushing to leave a legacy should not be as important a driving force as getting it right. At its most efficient, urban renewal must also include the heritage sector in order to preserve what is relevant about local history before it falls under the tracks of the bulldozers. However, there is need to emphasis once more that planning is a political process, not administrative, and should be carried out under the watchful eye of elected politicians. There should be new legislation removing primary responsibility for planning decisions from civil servants to the politician. Under the new system, the minister whose portfolio covers planning should be chairman of the national planning authority, with representatives including the opposition party and the constituency councils. There should also be a number of ex officio members, including the chief town and country planning officer, who should act as secretary to the committee, along with representatives from the utilities, medical profession, police, education authorities and traffic sector. Meetings should be open to the public and held every six weeks to a month at a pre-announced time and place. Appeals from the planning committee should in the first instance be to the high court and, failing that, the Appeal Court and, on matters of law only and not policy, to the Caribbean Court of Justice.
Funding:
Funding such a huge project will cost hundreds of millions, but there are a number of ways of executing such a project. So the first approach to funding should be to created an open-ended Infrastructure Development Fund, with an initial capital target of about Bds$1bn, permitting both retail and institutional investments. Before that, however, there should be a comprehensive development plan, which should be opened to the public for viewing and comment, there is no rational reason why the development should be carried out from start to finish as a one-off.
A more progressive approach would be to execute the plan incrementally with the compulsory purchase of the existing properties on a single street, or part of a street, provide temporary housing for all those families forced to move, giving the authorities time to build show apartments. As the completed properties come on the market, the former residents should be given first refusal on new apartments at market rates, before others are considered. Would-be buyers, including those from overseas, should be able to secure an apartment off plan by making a reasonable deposit, part of which should be non-returnable. The authority would then be able to raise any funding shortfall in the open market, either through a banking syndicate, a combination of banks and shadow banks, and retail investors.
Conclusion:
If John Maynard Keynes was right about the socio-cultural instincts of European Protestants to accumulate, then it suggests that Barbadians, and indeed the wider Caribbean people of African descent, might have failed this test. It is, too, the myth on which Max Weber based his most popular study, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Whatever the theory, however, the reality of policymaking is that the way it impacts on people is of central importance. Policymaking is a combination of theory and practice, of carefully analysing programmes and being receptive to the way they are received by stakeholders.
Urban renewal, a sub-theme, is also hybrid in that it combines the redesign of old districts, using a number of models or grids, along with wider government programmes, such as monetary policy. Given this, in place of vision, successive governments, through a lack of vision, have consistently preferred to turn vast tracks of the island, in particular the West Coast, in to holiday homes for the super-rich from North America and Europe, in the vain expectation that the owners of those homes would bring jobs and foreign exchange to the country. It is a lost cause. The low quality jobs they bring in general, such as security guards and domestics, although much appreciated, are far beneath what a nation that prides itself on the quality of its educational system should expect. One reason for this flawed belief is that we do not have any proper analysis of tax data to provide the evidence to suggest that the tax authorities in Barbados have a proper handle on the management of public taxation. If they do, and the failure to collect huge sums of money in outstanding VAT suggests otherwise, then there is a failure to extract from this data a narrative story of the state of the nation’s fiscal position. For example, without having to identify individuals, there is a wealth of sociological data that can be got from the data: a demographic breakdown in those on pay-as-you-earn and those on self-employed, professional and other form of tax payment, by age, gender and, maybe even qualifications. The data would also be able to tell us who are the highest paid people in the nation by profession, allowing people to form opinions about which are the occupational groups that add value to the nation. An urban renewal programme would create jobs for plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, masons, carpenters, plumbers, architects, civil and structural engineers, surveyors, security guards, labourers, drivers, furnisher providers, insurance brokers, lawyers, industrial nurses, administrative staff and loads more specialists. These in turn will receive salaries and go shopping for everything from food, clothes, paying their mortgages, etc, shops and stores will then see their turnovers increase, and, in turn, employ additional staff; government would then get income and VAT taxes and national insurance contributions; claimants would also come off the dole. This is the fiscal multiplier at its most basic. It is also the win-win situation steering the government in the face, one that is transparently enormous and which is mesmerising policymakers. With good strategic planning, it would be good to get all stakeholders to buy in to, government has had a number of angles on which it could pursue a widespread urban development plan which it has missed
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