OPM to Take Lead on Public-Sector Reform

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, said the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation and the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) will be leading by example in the push for public-sector reform.

He said he has already given directive for the OPM to identify ways it can restructure its operations.

Mr. Holness indicated that he has also had meetings with the directors and heads of departments within the Growth Ministry, for which he has portfolio responsibility, and has given instructions for all processes to be examined with a view to making them more efficient.

“Every single leader has to look at that process and see how they can make it shorter, faster, less bureaucratic; (they have to) re-engineer the process to support the growth agenda,” he said.

Mr. Holness said directors and department heads will be outlining how they propose to fast-track processes within the Ministry.

He was speaking during the recent Growth and Developing the Economy series, aired on Nationwide FM.

The Prime Minister noted that a great deal of work has already been done in the area of public-sector transformation to identify how functions and assets can be divested or contracted out to the private sector, what organisations can be merged, what areas need to be augmented, and how business procedures can be improved through the integration of technology.

“It’s not something that will happen overnight, but the process we are involved in is to get people to understand the broader vision,” he pointed out.

Mr. Holness stressed that a reformed public sector is critical to the economic growth thrust and is being “re-missioned” to reduce bureaucracy and improve efficiency in order to support the private sector.

“The role of Government in the growth strategy for Jamaica is to facilitate, encourage, stimulate, and support the private sector to invest. So Government has to strike a partnership with the sector to give them confidence that if they decide to lay out their capital… the public sector will recognise the urgency of the investment and ensure it goes through in keeping with the law,” he noted.

The Prime Minister also expressed confidence in his ‘poverty to prosperity’ vision for the country, noting that his Government is taking a deliberate and strategic approach to achieving economic growth.

He added that through collaboration with the World Bank, the Government is looking at countries that have had similar challenges to Jamaica and learning how they managed to achieve growth.

“The takeaway is that once the Government is convinced of the importance of growth and is willing to build consensus around economic growth, then that is the first step. What we have done is to try and build the social consensus around the need for economic growth, and I think we are driving that message clearly,” Mr. Holness said.