Financial Secretary Kenneth Jefferson is correct in his call for the government to build up its financial reserves.
I sincerely hope his call meets greater results that those raised by my colleague Gilbert McLean and I during the heyday of the National Team. On at least two occasions we advocated that the political directorate establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund or some other form of National Investment Fund to serve the jurisdiction in the event of a disastrous economic shift.
Instead of taking our suggestion seriously, we were castigated by the then political leader as “defunct schoolteachers” and told that “anyone who was successful in their profession stayed in it”. There were several problems with that observation, the most obvious being that the person who authored the observation was himself not practicing the vocation for which he was trained. Another problem was the obvious limit of the intellectual capacity of the author.
Officialdom for its part, weighed in with the excuse that government already had such provisions in the ‘General Reserves’. No amount of persuasiveness by two well-meaning but sometimes overzealous members could persuade the powers that were of the efficacy of their suggestion. Fortunately for the jurisdiction, none of the experienced crises from Hurricane Ivan to COVID-19 sent the jurisdiction into a tectonic financial shock.
We should, however, resist the urge to tempt fate any longer. Financial Secretary Ken Jefferson’s call should be heeded, and sooner rather than later. It is my wish that this new political directorate, upon which so many in the society have placed their hopes, take the challenge in establishing such a mechanism. After all, is it not high time that we have some enlightened leadership?
J. A. Roy Bodden
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This letter hits the nail on the head. Our current prosperity and global reputation are incredible resources, but history shows that good times are never guaranteed forever.
The best way to protect our people’s future is to keep the government small during economic peaks and direct our surplus revenue into a Cayman Sovereign Wealth Fund.
Just like Norway’s model, we can use this fund to indefinitely secure healthcare and pensions for all Caymanians, provided we have the political discipline to control government spending right now.