By Julian 'Jingles' Reynolds, Contributor

Seymour and Kennedy

My cousin Guy White, a product of upper Clarendon, is one of the entrepreneurs involved in furniture manufacturing in downtown Kingston. He has been there for at least 12 years, manufacturing mattresses and beds mainly on Matthews Lane, and displaying and selling from one of those 'abandoned' decrepit buildings once housing merchants and custom brokers on Harbour Street, for which he pays rent.

When it rains the building turns into a mini-pool. I am very proud of my young cousin, because he is continuing a tradition of furniture makers, carpenters and building contractors practised by his grandfather, my father and several of my uncles and male cousins from both sides of my families.

But Guy is at a great disadvantage, like so many of his colleagues involved in manufacturing and other small and micro businesses in downtown Kingston. He gets money to borrow to ply his trade from one of the micro lending programmes, repaying at now 40-odd per cent per annum. Poor Guy lamented when I went to visit him recently, how if he "could do any better" he would not borrow from "them". If he has a sick child, as he has experienced more than once, it becomes virtually impossible to meet his obligation to the bank.

implement a more favourable lending programme

The bank that runs the programme from which he gets the loan, Scotiabank, makes billions of dollars profit per annum, and expatriates most of it to Canada, but finds it hard to implement a more favourable lending programme to promote development and profitability among young Jamaican entrepreneurs. But theirs is not the only bank that offers these repressive micro loans to ambitious young people trying to improve their standards of living and offering employment to many others. Jamaica National and Victoria Mutual also offer extremely high-interest-rate loans to people with limited options.

Guy said when he took his first loan about four years ago it was for $30,000 at 25 per cent, and as he repaid he could get more, but rather than being offered lower interest rates the opposite occurred. Granted, in his case the lender takes no collateral, but in other instances they do with the prevailing high-interest rates.

The furniture manufacturing industry is one with great export potential and domestic possibilities in the revitalising of downtown Kingston. In 2000, Francis Kennedy, then executive director with GraceKennedy and now chairman of the Kingston City Centre Improvement Company, and Morin Seymour, executive director of the Kingston Restoration Company, invited me and my partners, then visiting Jamaica on a trade and investment mission by the National Minority Business Council out of the United States, to assist in the revitalising programme of downtown Kingston, and the first assessment we made was that any such programme should be industry-driven, building on existing industrial and commercial nodes. Building capacity by offering to all interested participants improved manufacturing equipment and technologies, training, improved manufacturing facilities, and a common or united marketing strategy.

But this takes full government facilitation, guidance and accessing, or providing affordable seed capitalisation. It requires more of a statist approach to governance, which appears to be out of vogue with the current political thinking. However, I insist that if Jamaica is to develop with more parity and justice, and less crime and violence, then government must play more of a socio-economic interventionist role, particularly in the early stages of development. It is only by encouraging and promoting economic development from within Jamaica, and among the Guy Whites throughout Jamaica, that the country has any chance of turning back the devastatingly high crime rate.

Another big disadvantage to the country is the social attitudes that stymie productivity: Poor customer relations and 'samfieism'. The 'samfie' remains a major stumbling block to orderly and sustained development. I recall in the early '60s my father declaring that he was not continuing with his passion of being a part-time builder and sub-contractor, as the 'workmen' were not prepared to give a 'fair day's work for a fair day's pay,' and this led to verbal confrontations and threats of violence between him and workmen. Since becoming more involved in daily Jamaican life over the last four years, I continue to see people taking money for work, without delivering.

Two recent examples I experienced were with two colleagues, one, an old friend, who has inexplicably not delivered on accounting assignments, failing even to communicate. Another, a printer, though receiving deposits to print labels and business cards, cannot deliver the work or return the advance.

I have friends who complain to me about mutual friends in the legal profession who have failed to conclude legal matters long overdue, despite receiving payments and requisite documents. This leads to much time wasted arguing, cursing, threatening and not producing. This depraved 'kass-kass' attitude pervades the entire society. It is in Parliament, banks, business places, clubs, middle-class homes, tenement yards, dancehall music, schools, and even the Church. Much time spent arguing and less time spent producing.

a failed state

I continue to blame leadership in Jamaica for the present state of affairs that has plunged the country into what banker William Clarke declared "a failed state". Though his description can be considered extreme, the truth is that if judged against its potential and achievements in some areas, Jamaica has been placed at a great disadvantage. Jamaica is a dichotomy, brilliant in parts but obnoxious, hateful and repulsive in too many ways.

It may call for a programme of mass psychology implemented by highly trained psychologist (a la Dale Carnegie) supported by the Church, service clubs and the Government going around the country to examine attitudes, social relations, conflict resolution, and the doing away of 'samfieism', cronyism, class prejudices and the hypocrisy so rife in Jamaica. In a recent conversation with Minister Pearnel Charles, we both agreed that not everything in our culture and coming from Africa should be accepted and practised; anancyism is one such bad practice.

Julian 'Jingles' Reynolds is a writer, film-maker and entrepreneur who operates in Jamaica and the United States.