Dear Editor,
For countries like Jamaica with a domestic production content high in external inputs, devaluation will increase our costs and debilitate our economy, especially if we sit around and wait for the market to make the adjustments.
One of the adjustments required is reducing and, where possible, removing the imported content and substituting them with local inputs into our domestic production. Of course, this requires changes to the status quo.
This necessitates a value analysis of products, industry by industry, to determine first of all the imported inputs that can be replaced by domestic inputs, and what is required to ensure the finished products maintain the same quality, or improved quality to the original products that contained the high external or imported inputs.
The market may conceivably come around to achieving this state of affairs, especially since we are almost at the point where we cannot afford to pay for our imports, but we could all be dead by the time it does that. We need a tangible mechanism properly resourced which can assist producers to actively engage in this value analysis and import substitution.
For example, it may be more cost-effective and efficient to derive our petrol from hemp, which we can grow throughout the Caribbean, rather than petroleum, which we spend billions to import each year, or some combination of the two.
Agriculture could be transformed by the substitution of poisonous chemicals with organic-type materials at significant reduction in our import cost. Animal feeds, all industries and all products could be subject to this examination. That is when our economy would grow, and we could see significant increases in exports.
Carlton Stewart
stewart.carlton@gmail.com
Getting our economy to grow
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For countries like Jamaica with a domestic production content high in external inputs, devaluation will increase our costs and debilitate our economy, especially if we sit around and wait for the market to make the adjustments.
One of the adjustments required is reducing and, where possible, removing the imported content and substituting them with local inputs into our domestic production. Of course, this requires changes to the status quo.
This necessitates a value analysis of products, industry by industry, to determine first of all the imported inputs that can be replaced by domestic inputs, and what is required to ensure the finished products maintain the same quality, or improved quality to the original products that contained the high external or imported inputs.
The market may conceivably come around to achieving this state of affairs, especially since we are almost at the point where we cannot afford to pay for our imports, but we could all be dead by the time it does that. We need a tangible mechanism properly resourced which can assist producers to actively engage in this value analysis and import substitution.
For example, it may be more cost-effective and efficient to derive our petrol from hemp, which we can grow throughout the Caribbean, rather than petroleum, which we spend billions to import each year, or some combination of the two.
Agriculture could be transformed by the substitution of poisonous chemicals with organic-type materials at significant reduction in our import cost. Animal feeds, all industries and all products could be subject to this examination. That is when our economy would grow, and we could see significant increases in exports.
Carlton Stewart
stewart.carlton@gmail.com
Getting our economy to grow
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