By Lavern Clarke, Staff Reporter
Clarke
WITH a commitment to team leadership, Oliver Clarke stepped up to the plate last week as president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), hoping to address what he sees as root causes of business decline -- crime and corruption.
Considered a hard working businessman from his mid-twenties when he entered the financial sector with a building society, Mr. Clarke, 57, has earned a reputation as a man who gets things done, quietly.
Now he wants to address a mix of social and business issues from the platform of the PSOJ, a body that incorporates the most powerful businesses in the island.
In language that was sometimes direct, but mostly diplomatic, the new PSOJ head spoke of 'working with' elected representatives and 'encouraging' action in developing workable strategies for crime, new investments and jobs, creating an environment that was not so hostile to foreign investors, and putting a check on the insularity that is welcoming of some investors, but not others.
LAW AND ORDER
"I am entirely unhappy with the state of law and order in this country," said Mr. Clarke in a Financial Gleaner interview a day into his presidency, as he outlined his personal reasons for seeking the position. "My personal interest is in trying to influence the Government and working with them in developing a more effective system."
Associated with that issue, he said, is an increasing view that Jamaicans do not believe that they all receive the same levels of justice before the local courts of law; and concerns about Customs' operations at the ports in relation to goods that escape the requisite import duties -- a situation that impacts competitiveness.
"Many members of the business community who are honest, are disadvantaged by goods coming into the country without the application of import duties," said the new president.
The 25-year-old PSOJ was formulated as a trade association to look out for the business interests of corporate Jamaica, but increasingly it has assumed a social role and is currently engaged in national attempts to bring rampant crime under control.
The issues the new president hopes to address, with agreement from his executive, also weigh heavy on the side of community intervention.
But Mr. Clarke, a powerhouse in business whose interests range across banking, newspaper publishing, the book industry, and radio, sees no dichotomy in the business association being so deeply engaged in social activism. His companies have long pursued such programmes, and alongside other involvements Mr. Clarke himself is a co-founder of PALS Jamaica, an initiative for schools that teaches dispute resolution through discourse.
"If the social conditions in Jamaica were at a more perfect level, then organisations like the PSOJ perhaps could deal with what are classically business issues -- right now it is problems such as crime that have to be dealt with in a priority to tax matters, for example," he said.
"People are not going to invest in Jamaica if they are going to get killed, shaken down by dons, and if the cost of operating here is excessive," he said.
TACKLING CORRUPTION
Jampro announced months ago that Jamaica had lost more than US$100m of foreign investments as a result of the West Kingston violence in July, indicating that crime now carries a high opportunity cost of earnings and, by extension, jobs foregone.
Additionally, the protection racket -- in which tens of millions of dollars of business revenues are said to flow into the hands of criminals as forced payables -- is seen by Clarke as an extension of a corrupted system.
"I am concerned about the perceived levels of corruption in Jamaica and would hope that the PSOJ will work with the Government to ensure that not only is anti-corruption legislation made effective, but that all steps are taken to reduce corruption."
JOBS
Mr. Clarke's third reason for offering himself for leadership hangs on job creation, specifically concerns that Jamaica "is not achieving a flow of new investments and new businesses," necessary ingredients for new employment creation.
Acknowledging that it would be difficult to transform Jamaica "into a platform" that attracts investor capital, the new president was decisive, however, in his assertion that it had to be done.
"The PSOJ must become intimately involved in trying to encourage economic growth and through that, jobs. After all, this is what the business community is there to do."
That declaration, however, is seemingly at odds with the hundreds of job cuts that have accompanied declining business. With the shrinking job market have come criticisms that the redundancies are a 'knee jerk' reaction by businesses in the rush to cut cost, over a strategic assessment of the situation.
"That interpretation is entirely wrong," said Mr. Clarke, adding that the moves were informed by carefully defined plans as well as pressures of survival. "The first rule for a business must be to remain profitable otherwise it will sink. It has to be more important for it to be able to maintain 80 per cent of its employees than to crash the whole business."
In his take on private enterprise, Mr. Clarke said the manufacturing base has been all but wiped out, while agriculture is suffering terribly, largely because of competition from more cheaply produced imports some of which are subsidised. The situation, he noted, is forcing local companies to address productivity issues, and getting unit costs down in order to compete internationally.
But he saw hope in the service sector, citing the port of Kingston as an "exciting example" of business success that had advantages of location backed by good management and excellent marketing, to develop a transhipment base.
Tourism, which has taken some knocks as a result of recent local and world events, should bounce back, he said, but has its disadvantages in the form of visitor harassment.
Mr. Clarke, who has been associated with the PSOJ since its inception and is a 1996 inductee in its Hall of Fame, chose not to speak in detail about the direct strategies to be pursued over his administration, ahead, he said, of consultations and consensus from the executive and officers -- designated by him as Team 2002. Those consultations take place over the next few weeks.
Mr. Clarke said of the PSOJ team that the grouping was "strong and experienced" and sufficiently broad-based and influential to get things done.
