A discourse on the Government’s new “motor vehicle stimulus package”

 

by Christopher Henry

 

Well folks, Today I went into my inbox and saw an email from one of my groups stating that the Governement is offering a “stimulus package” to the importers of motor vehicles  due to their incapacity to weather the recessional tide effectively. Ok, first and foremost let me define a stimulus package. A stimulus package is an economic package containing certain funds which are given to either manufactures to stimulate production (domestic production) thus propelling any economy out of recession, or monies give to individuals to spend in order to pump money back into a stagnant economy and usually it is given to the lower income bracket members of society, as shockingly enough, they spend the most. Now, after that definition, given to me by a macroeconomist, explain to me how, a stimulus for imported motor vehicles is going to help our nation out of this recession? For one, we do not make motor vehicles, we only import them, therefore the Government makes their income by charging duty on them. So if you decide that the “stimulus” will be a drastic cut in the duty on cars, how do you, the government, intend to make money? This is the proposed stimulus and they also intend to give the dealers tax breaks. So giving the dealers, who I see driving around the latest cars, living in some big uptown area and having some of the largest bank accounts tax breaks is our way out of recession? I think not! So the government is going to slash half its funding by giving this “stimulus package” to some of the only people who pay their direct taxation. Well, my view, the government apparently does not know the meaning of stimulus package neither do they want to be self sufficient. We are already going to the International Monetary Fund(IMF) as the opposition so right put it “with cup in hand” and we are here giving tax breaks to wealthy and “stimulus packages” to imported goods and not to manufacturing sectors of our local economy that contributes to our Domestic production and stability. What the government needs to do, is to give a “stimulus package” to small business which sell our Jamaican products, give it to the manufactures of the Jamaican manufacturing association, to boost their production in order to spur consumption of Jamaican goods and finally LESSEN OUR IMPORTS!. This stimulus will not stimulate growth but further our obsession and dependence on foreign goods. For far too longs, respective governments, both JLP and PNP, have allowed the import bill to steadily increase, thus feeding our desire for foreign goods hence automatically our psyche relegates the local products to the back of the pile because “from the government a allow suh much fi come, it nuh muss better”as I Heard one person saying while in a prominent upper St. Andrew supermarket the other day. That would lead me to another point, on how the supermarkets stock their shelves but that is for a next discourse.  We must wean ourselves from foreign products and by giving this break on motor vehicles; the government is not weakening the import crazy Jamaican base but strengthening it by giving us the various luxury cars which Jamaicans desire hence not pumping the money into our economy but instead by that Mercedes that they so long desired since there will be so many on the market.  So I say to The Prime Minister and his cabinet, do not go through with this package, you will only dig Jamaica further into recession and allow the gap between the rich and the poor to widen.