What "Buy Jamaican" should mean

There are Jamaican hotels like Pegasus that are always buzzing with activity, and Spanish Court Hotel, which has done very well as a small boutique hotel, not because they are 100 per cent Jamaican but because they are of a very high standard.

Earlier this week I attended a forum and was asked to answer some questions from the audience. The forum was about entrepreneurship and one person, an entrepreneur himself, addressed the audience and encouraged everyone that they should buy Jamaican products in preference to imported ones and criticized the Jamaican branded companies that actually manufacture their products abroad, while everyone believed that they were 100 percent Jamaican made products.

You will recall that a recent news report identified products from two well known Jamaican companies as made primarily in other countries and branded as products of the Jamaican companies, and it to this that the reference was made.

The meeting was addressing young entrepreneurs and therefore I felt compelled to respond to the statement about the need for us to buy Jamaican always in preference to imported products.

I made the point to the young entrepreneurs that I do not want them to walk away with the view that we should buy a product just because it is 100 percent made in Jamaica, as what we could end up doing is supporting inefficiency and this could result in us continuing to underachieve as a country. I went on to say that in fact, up until the early 1990s, when the economy was liberalised, Jamaica actually did have a buy Jamaica campaign. This was well voiced in the 1970s, and continued in the 1980s, not as a campaign, but rather in the form of tarrifs that protected Jamaican goods. In other words, we forced persons to buy Jamaican goods by establishing trade barriers and foreign exchange controls to ensure that we kept as much money as possible in Jamaica and spent on Jamaican produce.

Another country that has done that, whether by their own design or the US embargo, is Cuba. The question we must therefore ask ourselves is, has Jamaica benefitted from the Buy Jamaica campaign in the 1970s and protectionist policies up to the 1990s. I clearly remember that we were only allowed to take out US$50 up to the early 1990s, when we were travelling, and all it did in my view was to create cheats of persons who were caught trying to take more than US$50 out of the country. I have not seen any lasting positive economic results from that era.

The point to be made is that if we are to promote the idea that we should buy a product just because it has 100 percent Jamaican input, in preference to one with 30 per cent Jamaican input then we could actually be doing ourselves a disservice by promoting low poductivity and inefficiency. And this is a very important point for us to understand as a country.

Instead I advised the young entrepreneurs there that they should not expect that their produce will be bought just because its Jamaican, but rather because it is of the highest world standard. To otherwise expect that your product will be bought by a Jamaican just because it is made 100 per cent in Jamaica is to expect patronage.

I, for example, do believe that we should buy Jamaican produce and services and do prefer to buy some Jamaican products to imported ones. But my choice is not based on the fact that they are 100 per cent Jamaican produce but because the Jamaican products I buy I think are superior to the foreign ones.

I think of Jamaican brands like Sandals, which as far as I am concerned is a far superior to most other hotels whether in Jamaica or overseas. This is so much recognised by the market that Sandals is able to charge a significant premium, and is one of the reasons why I can't always go there myself but that is good for Jamaica and Sandals. Also Grace, Lasco, National, and Island Grill are strong Jamaican brands that consumers purchase, not because they are 100 per cent Jamaican but because they represent a higher value than many foreign brands.

There are Jamaican hotels like Pegasus and Knutsford Court that are always buzzing with activity, and Spanish Court Hotel, which has done very well as a small boutique hotel, not because they are 100 per cent Jamaican but because they are of a very high standard.

And this does not mean that their prices are the lowest in the market also (as Sandals) but because they provide the best value for the dollar. I only have to think of my preference for local agricultural products, and the reason why I prefer going to Coronation market to get produce than in the supermarkets. This is not because the prices are necessarily cheaper than the imports, or that it is more convenient to go to Coronation market. Rather I prefer to buy the Jamaican produce from Coronation market because they are fresher and closer to organic than the imports.

The above highlights the importance of value and standards in purchase decisions. My word to young entrepreneurs therefore is not to think along the lines that you will succeed just becaue your products are all Jamaican but rather because you produce the highest standard product. This is the only way that you can sustain your business model and grow your business. Else what you are asking for is patronage.

I also would encourage Jamaicans to always purchase Jamaican products also, not because you should patronize Jamaican products, but because I truly believe that many of our Jamaican products are superior to the foreign ones.

This leads me to another point though that their is no Jamaican product that is 100 per cent Jamaican. A significant part of production cost is energy, of which oil is our main import. There is also the cost of packaging, which even if the printing is done here, the paper is not made here. The furniture that many of us use is either imported or the raw material in the furniture is imported. So there is no truly 100 per cent Jamaican product.

We also need to understand that if we are to develop then we must create global brands, such as Sandals, Grace, Jamaica Producers, etc. What this means also is that these global brands, in order to compete and grow must produce where it is in their best interest to do so, from a financial and supply chain management perspective.

Therefore when we see that a company is not using mostly Jamaican inputs we must not criticise themfor doing so but rather must ask what can we do as a country to ensure that they increase Jamaican inputs. So is it that they can't get consistent supplies; labour productivity is low in Jamaica; bureaucracy stifles productivity; or our tax rates are not competitive.

In other words if we want to create brands with more Jamaican inputs (including foreign brands that want Jamaican inputs) then we must encourage our entrepreneurs to meet global standards and must also ensure that our policy makers create a very friendly doing business environment.

Practising the Law of Priorities

I have just completed reading a book by John C. Maxwell, titled the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, which was kindly given to me by Everton Bryan from IAS, who was recently recognized as the CEO of the year for Action Coach International. The book is about the characteristics that good leaders possess, and is something that we all know but what it does is lay it out in a very structured way. And I would certainly recommend it to anyone who wants to work on developing their leadership ability.

One of the laws (principles) that I thought is very important for us to understand as a country, and could be extended to the region, as we seek to develop our economy with limited resources (financial and HR) is the law of priorities.

What this law says is that leaders must understand that activity is not necessarily accomplishment. In other words, as I wrote in my last book, working efficiently is much more important than working hard. It is not as important how much you do as it is what you do in a day at work.

Many of us will know people who are always busy and always working late. But at the end of the day it seems like they always have a lot of work piled on their desks with little accomplishment. When I say accomplishment I don’t mean just doing various tasks but doing something that adds value to the organization or people around them. So just working hard and not seeing any “value added” at the end of it means that the organization will stand still as you are doing the same thing everyday and hence you will get the same result, which most times means not creating a competitive edge.

What it means therefore is that when we are faced with a lot of work and limited resources then in order to accomplish any value added what we must do is observe the law of priorities, or put another way focus on what will add value, given the resource constraint.

So using the example of people exercising to get fit, or just have a healthy lifestyle, many persons do not organize their exercise so that it is as efficient as possible. So they spend two hours each day walking or running leisurely and can’t understand why they can’t get results. While if they spent 20 minutes on much more intense exercise, which would not allow them to talk, then they would get far better results. Or in an organization some people always cry out for more resources to get things done, while the more organized person first recognizes the limitation of the resources and prioritizes within that limitation. Guess who ends up getting the results.

I think this lack of prioritizing is also one of the root causes of the challenges we face in Jamaica, and one could maybe extend it to the region. Too many times, especially at the political level over the years, we want to be all things to all people and end up being nothing to all people. In other words in our quest to please everyone we end up making everyone worse off. This of course is because we do not apply the law of priorities to our actions.

So everyone recognizes that the country has a fiscal challenge, a high debt-GDP ratio, and spend more than we earn, among many other challenges. And we recognize that we cannot try to do everything we would like to do because of limited resources. In fact one of the things that is clear is that the maybe the most fundamental reason why the country has not developed is that we have promoted labour and capital unproductivity, through government policies and fiscal welfare, which we have funded with debt in the past.

We also recognize that in order to change this paradigm that we have to change this culture of low productivity, and place capital, which includes the limited fiscal resources, in the places that returns the highest value. In other words we must make a list of what the actions that will bring greatest value and help us to achieve the goal of economic and social development. Put another way if we continue to try to stretch our meagre resources and support spending that discourages productivity then we will be “Back at One” as Brian McKnight sings.

So what we must do is adopt the law of priorities, as well as the law of sacrifice, in our quest for real economic and social development. So we can’t continue to use our meagre resources to promote practices that discourage productivity, which simply means we can’t use fiscal expenditure to support persons who do not intend to become productive or competitive. Otherwise called handouts. It also means that we need to prioritize what our reform areas should be. That is those that will have the greatest impact on the agenda going forward. This is what the documented economic programme schedule is supposed to do and it means that we must ensure that we do not “waiver” from it.

This need to prioritize the right actions also means that when we are setting policy, that we must also ensure that the policies are done with the longer term objective of sustainable development, rather than short term gains to meet a target only.

This is the same thing that businesses must do everyday. They would like to have unlimited resources to do everything they want to do but must consider the capital, projected business, the limitation of the human resources, market conditions etc. and then prioritize the strategies and match them with the available resources. You then do what will bring the greatest long term value to the business.

It seems to me that this is something that we need to understand as a country. As we get nearer to the “political silly season”, a.k.a. elections, let us apply this law of priorities and not get sidetracked with unrealistically trying to be all things to all people, and end up pleasing no one.

This is the challenge that we face as we continue to manage our meagre resources, and while it is possible to achieve the elusive development we have always wanted, even with our much more limited resources. It can only happen with the application of the laws of priorities and sacrifice. The reward for this will be prosperity for all.