With countries like Guyana having promised much but delivered little in terms of public/private sector cooperation in pursuit of meaningful national development projects, a recent study on reforming the regional public sector produced by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) is recommending restructuring regional public service reform that focuses on the outsourcing of what has been commonly regarded as traditional public service responsibilities to the private sector.
The essence of CaPRI’s recommendation is that in circumstances where services requiring government to assume substantive risk, but which may be better delivered by private sector, management should be outsourced.
Further, the study says that in cases where private sector entities have the capacity to assume the requisite level of financial, technical and operational risk, but may require government support, public-private partnerships should be introduced.
“If public and private sector interests are better served by having the private sector deliver a public service, then such services should be divested,” CaPRI said in the study titled ‘Reforming Public Sector Reform’.
The study has been undertaken against the backdrop of years of regional discourse regarding the viability of public/private sector partnerships in undertaking development projects with the argument being made that the inefficiencies, incompetence and wastage that are often manifested in public sector projects can be eliminated or at least significantly reduced with a higher level of private sector involvement, given that the latter possesses the incentive of the profit motive.
In outlining aspects of the public-sector rationalization plan, CaPRI observes that regional public sector reform has become an important conditionality for accessing International Monetary Fund (IMF) support.
Recently, Jamaica has been pushed in that direction on account of its agreement with the IMF and that direction has included maintaining a path of public-sector wages consistent with a reduction on the wage bill to nine per cent of gross domestic product by fiscal year 2016/17.
Here in Guyana tough recent post-elections discourse over a salary increase for public servants has raised the issue as to whether or not, despite its size, the Guyana public service possesses the human resource capacity to deliver on the requirements of the country.
CaPRI’s probe into reasons for the failure of public service reform efforts in Jamaica has posited that the failure might have been due in part to government’s failure to clearly define its role and, as a result, to deliver public services focused on that role.
It outlined nine areas identified by the Public Sector Transformation Unit which it said the Government should influence: a safe, healthy and secure environment; an effective and accessible justice system; a good-quality education system; access to basic health care; social-welfare support for the disadvantaged; public infrastructure and related services, an efficient public bureaucracy; an appropriate policy environment and regulatory mechanisms, and diplomacy.
Most of these areas have, from time to time, been the subject of public discourse in discussions on improving the quality of the public service in Guyana.
The Jamaica Public Service is currently undergoing a number of specific and strategically significant reforms. The Caricom member country has also disclosed plans to continue reducing the size of the public sector, over fiscal years 2014 to 2016, through the elimination of posts and what it describes as an attrition programme. Additionally, Jamaica is expected to embrace a new pension system by the start of fiscal year 2016/17.
