By month end we suppose, Finance Minister Audley Shaw will table in Parliament a revised budget for the fiscal year that ends on March 31.

Initially, the administration had promised that there would be no need for such supplementary estimates of expenditure, given that it planned to move to zero-based budgeting and tight management of the fiscal accounts.

The reality of Jamaica's fiscal environment, compounded by the global crisis, clearly knocked the young Government's assumptions badly askew.

Crafting A credible document

It is understandable in this environment that the Government would have missed its original December deadline for the revised budget, and we appreciate the difficulties being faced by the finance ministry in crafting a document that remains credible in the face of its original fiscal targets.

The promise of single-single digit inflation, for instance, has long been ditched. The consumer price index is projected to end in the range of 14-17 per cent. Interest rates have risen sharply as the Government has moved to squeeze credit to stabilise the Jamaican dollar that has already slipped more than 12 per cent this year.

The most closely tracked indicator, though, is the fiscal deficit, and the signs here are not particularly encouraging.

The administration had hoped to hold the deficit to 4.7 per cent of GDP. However, during the first nine months of the fiscal year, despite the Government having spent $13 billion or five and a half per cent less then projected, the deficit was 330 per cent wider than it was targeted to be at that point. The Government has just not been able to collect enough taxes from traditional sources.

If Mr Shaw is to hold to his original deficit target, he will have to continue to crimp expenditure - but tighter - and/or find ways to collect more taxes, either by enhanced efficiency or from new measures and/or higher rates. This latter option, in the short term, seems the most plausible.

Mobilise populace

If the administration is to take the necessary tough decisions, rather than merely muddle through, and for Jamaica to emerge from the crisis fit for growth, then it has to set the correct tone. People have to be appropriately mobilised.

In that regard, it is long past time for a frank, coherent and consistent dialogue on the depth of the problem and what needs to be done to fix it. The kind of en passant statements by officials about the depth of our difficulties is not good enough.

Clear vision

But frank analyses of the situation have to be accompanied by a clear vision of what is to be done, setting a clear path to a future of growth and development. Unfortunately, we have not discerned in the administration a big idea, or a clear picture, of the way forward.

For instance, the Jamaica Labour Party, while still in Opposition, under its former leader, Edward Seaga, used to talk of the redevelopment of the Kingston Waterfront and areas along the south coast into a free port and using the Petrojam oil refinery as the hub for a petro-chemical industry.

Nothing similar, and seemingly credible, has emerged in the current dispensation.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.