EDITORIAL - A way out for the PM

The decision of the private sector and civil-society groups to opt out of the committee that was monitoring the implementation of the 381-megawatt power plant underlines the crisis into which that economically strategic project has plunged and the urgency with which Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller must act to rescue Jamaica's reputation and to formulate an alternative to this failed enterprise.

Happily for the prime minister and her technocrats, the private-sector groups - the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, the Jamaica Manufacturers' Association and the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica - in their statement last Friday offered a clear path out of the current fiasco. So, she need waste no time determining how to proceed.

What the PM must now do is instruct the energy minister, Phillip Paulwell, to rescind the licence he granted to the hazy Hong Kong-based firm, Energy World International (EWI), to develop and operate the gas-burning plant and start the process anew.

Further, we agree with the private-sector groups that the system previously employed, in which the Office of Utilities Regulation drove the procurement exercise, is so badly tainted that it can't be relied on going forward. We, therefore, support the suggestion that Mrs Simpson Miller, having consulted with the Government's partners in the Partnership for Jamaica arrangement, name a credible enterprise team, including foreign experts, to draft the new tender documents and to review the bid(s).

Indeed, this new arrangement should reside in the Office of the Prime Minister/Cabinet Office and under the direction of the prime minister herself.

Not convinced

Given the urgency of bringing on new, and substantially cheaper, electricity-generating capacity, we would not be averse - if the best price is assured, the process is sufficiently transparent, and meets the standards of our international partners - to the sole-sourcing method being employed for the project. For given the debacle in which recent efforts at generating new electricity capacity has fallen, we are not convinced the policy requiring that all new generating capacity in Jamaica, including for replacement of existing plants, must go to public tender.

But whatever system is employed, the Jamaica Public Service Company, the monopoly distributor of electricity, should, we feel, be encouraged to be part of it.

Should the prime minister not move expeditiously, we fear that given the Inter-American Development Bank's (IDB) assessment of how poorly the power plant bid was handled, the global community may consider Jamaica a place of murky business deals, to be approached warily by legitimate enterprises.

Indeed, we appreciate that expensive power weakens the competitiveness of Jamaica's economy and the motivation of Mr Paulwell to bring to the table a firm that might have afforded cheaper electricity. But, like Jamaica's contractor general, in faulting the exercise, the IDB insists that the manner in which EWI was grafted into a bidding process that was already in train runs counter to its own policies. The bank rejected applications to help finance the project.

Such concerns have not been helped by the shadowy way in which EWI has behaved, beyond failing to meet the deadline for posting a performance bond, notwithstanding that it may have been granted an extension by Minister Paulwell. The company has been less than transparent about its ownership, potential partners in the venture, and specific plans for financing the deal. EWI feeds a perception that it has something to hide.

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