short-term improvements in caribbean economic planning

Short-Term Improvements In Caribbean Economic PlanningAuthor(s): C. Y. THOMASSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 4 (December, 1964), pp. 55-66Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40652915 .

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Short-Term Improvements In Caribbean Economic Planning

i.

MOST of the papers read so (far have concentrated on broad and sweeping themes such as the historical, cultural, intellectual and social development of the Caribbean society. In the face of those enormous intellectual endeavours I offer apologies because my paper is concerned with the comparatively minor problem of searching for ways to improve existing planning techniques which might be of some use during the next decade of Caribbean Planning.

During these seminars the claim has often been made that it is pointless to discuss planning techniques until we are all certain oí the direction in which we want our societies to develop. I am only in partial sympathy with this claim, for it seems to me also that our technical capacity to influence our environment must in turn exercise its own claims over what we can conceivably do, or what we can conceivably want to do.

Accordingly, by limiting the improvements to the possibilities of the next decade of planning, I am making the assumption that no fundamental changes will occur (either in the structure of Caribbean politics or the structure of Caribbean society), which would permit a drastic extension in our concept of planning. In other words, the basic parliamentary party system is expected to remain and the private sector will continue to dominate the economic life of the region.

But in so «far as this paper recognizes the structural constraints imposed by the conservative nature of the region's politics and its social life, it seeks also to exhaust the possibilities of planning within these constraints while at the same time being flexible enough to recognize that there is need for these constraints to be eliminated, before the fundamental solutions to the region's problems can be attained. Thus the paper offers no panaceas but merely a few pragmatic improvements to the scope of our various Planning Secretariats.

The new planning techniques which will be suggested in this paper are based upon a particular interpretation of what are the major factors preventing an increase in material welfare, for the broad mass of the Caribbean community. The three major problems to my mind are: (i)

* This was on« of the papers read at the inter-disciplinary seminar, Small Societies in Transition, organised by the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies. It is published here as it was presented, save for minor revisions.

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the under-utilization of human resources; (li) the structural disequilibrium of the economies; (ill) the excessive dependence of the economies on the rest of the world to maintain and increase internal levels of employment, output, demand and prices. It should be noted immediately, that even at the most superficial of levels, the problems enumer- ated here are not intended to represent mutually exclusive categories.

An impression of the unemployment problem is given by the fact that for the year 1943, unemployment in the Caribbean averaged approximately 2-3% of the labour force and by 1960 this had increased to approximately 10-17% of the labour force. There are no firm estimates of underemployment, but there can be little doubt that this is also considerable. There are six critical factors which determine the rate of growth of the underutilization of the labour force in the Caribbean. Firstly, we have the rate of growth of the population in general, secondly the work/leisure preferences of the community, thirdly the level of effective demand, fourthly the rate of growth of full capacity output, fifthly the impact on labour productivity of the technology used in expanding full capacity output and finally the price at which labour offers its services.

It is important at this stage where I am only delineating the main character of the problem, to point out that the existence of Caribbean unemployment is overwhelmingly a structural phenomenon. Saying this does not deny that the seasonality of the production structure in the Caribbean causes some seasonal unemployment, but the emphasis on the structural aspect of the problem is necessary if we are to make it quite clear that the level of effective demand (or the Keynesian short period phenomenon) is not a significant factor influencing Caribbean unemployment. Apart from seasonal unemployment brought about by variations in demand in periods of less than a year, unemployment in the Caribbean has been brought about mainly by the failure of full capacity output to grow fast enough, by the increases in labour productivity and by the secular growth of Trade Unionism and its impact on money wage rates.

Two further features of the unemployment problem should also be noted. One is that the growth of unemployment has been accompanied by large locational shifts of labour away from the rural areas to the urban areas. The other feature is that even as this shift was occurring, some West Indian economies, e.g., Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, were laying heavy emphasis on an industrialization programme. That there was a rapid increase in unemployment despite the large growth of manufacturing output suggests two things. One is that industrialization will not absorb labour as rapidly as we had hoped or as will be necessary if serious inroads are to be made into the unemployment problem of the Caribbean. The other is that the specific form in which the industrialization programme is being advanced does not encourage investors to see that with large scale unemployment, the social cost of labour is zero.

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The question oí unemployment is closely related to the structural disequilibria evident in the Caribbean economy. Theoretically, structural disequilibrium can manifest itself either at the goods levels or the factor level. While there are evidences of structural disequilibrium at the goods level in the Caribbean, e 43., cotton, the major form in which this disequilibrium has manifested itself is at the factor level. Thus it is possible to identify two features of the factor market, one is that the same factor earns large differences in returns in different uses and the other is that the price relationships between the various factors are obviously out of line with known factor availabilities. Thus for example, interest rates are too low and the wage rate certainly too high when measured with strict reference to the known factor endowments of the Caribbean.

These structural defects of the factor market are compounded by the dual structure of the economies. The central dichtomy of the Caribbean economy is the combination of foreign capital, local labour and land resources 'of a unique quality' (containing mineral deposits or having a productivity higher than average because of greater fertility or better drainage and location, etc.) on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the rest of the economy, which combines local capital, local labour and land resources of not such a unique character. Thus we have in these economies two sets of factor proportions and two sets of factor prices coexisting side by side. In one sector of the economy there are high wages, partly because the productivity of labour is higher than the other sector, where wage rates and productivity are considerably lower.

The dual structure of the Caribbean economy overlaps several other categorisations. The dichotomy can be illustrated by reference to the differential utilization of regions within the same country, or it can be sustained in terms of the division between the primary producing export sector and the domestic peasant farming structure, or for that matter between the foreign owned and locally owned sectors.

However it manifests itself, the theoretical solution to this dual structure is to change the known factor proportions of the economies, or the factor prices currently offered on the market. Planning so «far has emphasized the former solution, not explicitly, but implicitly, in so far as capital accumulation and labour decumulation have been emphasized as solutions to the region's economic problems. As we shall argue later both policies could and should be attempted.

It was mentioned earlier that the productivity of labour could offer only a partial explanation of the money wage rate. This is so because an important element in the determination of the money wage rate is the strength of Trade Unions in the Caribbean which, as we all know, is very great. But this situation has been misread by economists in two ways. Firstly, it has been assumed that high wages pressed on reluctant employers have been the main determinants of the phenomenal labour substitution which iias taken place, particularly

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in the sugar industry. But evidence so far obtained by Brewster and myself on British Guiana and Jamaica does not confirm this supposition. '

It may be as Brewster argues that initially labour costs were high relative to the cost of other factors and that therefore labour substitution should take place where possible, but in fact the pressure for increasing wage rates by the unions was no more than a pressure to maintain labour's share in total income. And despite this unprece- dented pressure total earnings of unskilled workers fell by 11% in Jamaica between 1957-61, and to maintain 'parity' it would have been necessary for the wage rate to rise by over 40% between 1957 and 1961, and one wonders what the economists and the general public would have said about that.

The second, and equally dangerous way in which this situation has been misread, is that it has been interpreted as the rationale for an incomes policy, which would tie the wage rate to a productivity index. Upon a little reflection it should be obvious that such a policy cannot be effectively interpreted in the context of an open economy with a large degree of structural unemployment and little or no real influence on the movement of foreign trade and prices. Thus for example the value of output per unit of labour can change independent of any change in physical productivity if there is an increase in export prices, as determined by the rest of the world. Similarly, changes in import prices, determined without any reference to the local economy, through their effect on the cost of living can change the real wage rate independent of any changes in physical productivity. It may be sup- posed that all that is necessary is to adjust the productivity index by the commodity terms of trade. However, because export and import prices affect the wage rate and the value product in different ways and also because they move independent of each other, the real concern is the rate of change in import prices and the rate of change in export prices. Thus the productivity index is of little or no real value.

One very likely effect of a productivity/wages policy is to lead to a functional distribution of income in which labour's share is being reduced. For the years 1957-62 Brewster's figures show that labour productivity increased on average about 3% per annum in Jamaica whilst the real wage rate grew by about 1.5%, and the money wage rate by about 6%, thereby highlighting the infinite complications in the allegedly simple productivity/wage rate relationship. In so far as this incomes policy seems to imply in West Indian conditions a fall in labour's share, it is striking that it should be similar to the other principal point in Professor Arthur Lewis's development theory, i.e. the ratio of profits in the national income should rise. Professor Arthur Lewis has been the main advocate for an incomes policy in the Carib- bean. 2

The third problem of the Caribbean economies is dependence. Some aspects of this have been discussed at these seminars and so far people have concentrated on size and the large proportion of domestic output exported. This has led to some form of pessimism. It is argued

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that exports will always be necessary because the domestic market is too small, and the domestic market is too small because both population size and per caput incomes are too small. These aggregative dis- advantages are compounded by the fact that the population in relation to known and available resources and their rate of increase is too large.

Dependence however is exhibited in several other features of the Caribbean economy. It can be seen in the high propensities to import, the importance of export and import prices in determining both domestic incomes and price levels, the extent to which domestic capital formation is financed from abroad, the extent to which locally available sav- ings are sent abroad, the dependence of Government activity on foreign factors and the large external debts.

The major weakness of our discussion so far has been the tendency to see dependence as a uni-dimensional phenomenon. Thus for example it has been enough to point out the high volume of domestic output exported. But, a closer examination will show that dependence is not only a function of the value of exports, but also of the range of commodities exported and their distribution in world markets. The same holds good for the import structure. Thus, if at the same proportion of foreign trade the economy could substitute its high specialization in exports for the wide diversity, say reflected in its imports, dependence would be reduced considerably. It follows therefore that dependence should not be seen simply in terms of crude aggregates even though unquestionably size remains an important constraint.

This broad background to the Caribbean economic problems as presented here will be supplemented by noting three aspects of existing planning before we go on to the areas of possible reform. The first point to note is that planning so far has been public sector planning and not national planning. This has been the overt inten- tion in British Guiana and Barbados but in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, where the plans have been conceived of as national endeavours, effectively they have become public sector plans since details of the techniques of deterring and encouraging the private sector have not been properly co-ordinated with the plans, or for that matter made explicit. This is by any standard a deplorable situation since the public sector tax receipts are only about 15-23% of national expendi- ture, the Governments contribute only 15-30% of development expendi- ture, and public capital formation is between 10-20% of total capital formation.

This necessity for national as against public sector planning is nowhere more evident than in British Guiana. There the post-war rice programme has had the creation of jobs as the major economic aim. But even as this was occurring, the private sector, and sugar in particular, has been displacing labour at a faster rate than the growth of employment in rice, and the consequence has been a worsening of the unemployment situation.

The second point to note in connection with what will be said later is that after details of the plans have been worked out they have been

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tested for feasibility by the use of modified input-output techniques. The important point about this technique, which I shall mention for the benefit of non-economists, is that it does not include any objective criterion for optimization. It only states whether the plan is feasible, and of course any number of plans are feasible.

The third point to notice is the goals of planning. British Guiana has been the only territory where an explicit employment goal has been stated. In the other territories there have been no specific targets for the reduction of unemployment. Indeed at the most optimistic the Trinidad plan aims at providing jobs for the net additions to the existing labour force, leaving the back log of unemployment untouched. The reason for this is that income growth under existing conditions is incompatible with increases in employment and governments while declaring their intentions to create employment and stimulate growth have refused to recognize the historical evidences which show the two aims to be incompatible, given the present structural relationships in the Caribbean economy. This contradiction is further highlighted to the extent that all the plans set as their main objective the eventual structural reorganisation of the economies. Despite this, there has been no attempt to discourage the growth of the traditional sectors and indeed their most rapid growth has been the main desire. Here again the historical record would suggest that concentration on the rapid development of the traditional sector has been inimical to the structural reorganisation and integration of the Caribbean economies.

Before we go on, I would like to state that for a complex of reasons, some already mentioned and others which it is not possible to mention here, the main aim of planning will be conceived of as (i) the elimina- tion of unemployment, (ii) an increase in the integration of the economy and (iii) a growth in real per caput incomes only in so far as this growth is not strongly incompatible with the attainment of the other two primary objectives.

II. In the face of these enormous problems there are certain improve-

ments which can be made with the use of the existing basic machinery and which would not require too violent a shift in either political or social attitudes. Of course this is essentially a second-best solution, but if we are to be pragmatic, as well as visionary in these seminars, we cannot ignore, until the revolution in political and social attitudes takes place, (which we all consider to be the fundamental requirement) the urgency of poverty and unemployment, here and now.

The first extension in the scope of planning that can be made is an improvement in the presently utilized techniques for decision making. The testing for feasibility, by the use of input/output techniques have been modified to take into account the fact that inter- dependence, through the sales of "commodities from one sector to another and from the use of the same primary factors" is not a significant feature of the industrial structure of the Caribbean. Not-

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withstanding this, the use of these techniques rests on some fairly simple assumptions. Firstly, each commodity is assumed to be produced by a single industry and this implies only one method of production for each commodity. Secondly, the input/output function is assumed to be linear and the input of each industry is some unique function of the output of that industry. Thirdly, it is assumed that there are no external economies or diseconomies to be derived from the aggregation of the various types of production.

Now, it is impossible at this stage to eliminate all of these short- comings in the decision making techniques, but the introduction of what are known as linear programming techniques can go some way. This is possible because these techniques contain certain innovations. They explicitly allow for several different ways of producing the same good and as a consequence they permit the injection of specific criteria for preferring one solution to another. In other words choice becomes an explicit part of the technique.

What is possibly of overwhelming significance from our viewpoint is that these techniques make it possible to plan on the basis of revalued factor prices. If you recall, it was advanced earlier that the two solutions to structural disequilibria were changing factor prices or factor proportions. This technique makes it possible to allocate resources on the basis of shadow prices, which would entail revising the price of labour downwards and capital upwards. The consequence is likely to be the use of production functions in which more labour will be used per unit of output than currently obtains en the basis of existing market prices, and possibly to increase investment in sectors, e.g. hous- ing, which utilizes labour in large quantities.

While this possibility exists with respect to public sector spending, its use in the private sector may entail a system of subsidies and taxa- tion. Brewster has outlined some brief proposals in his paper on Planning in the West Indies, so I shall not comment any further on this. 3 Before leaving this point, it is important for me to stress that although advocated as an improvement, the linear programming technique is certainly not going to lead to any miraculous solutions. The technique itself still contains many severe limitations e.g. its assumption of rational maximizing behaviour, its assumption of linear production functions and its ignoring external economies and diseconomies (which in many respects are the real essences of growth).

The second improvement in planning is the introduction of a monopolies policy which is tied to planning proposals. This monopolies policy can be of a two- fold character, i.e., it can seek to control monopolies by public ownership of the industry or it can seek to control by supervision of the companies through some variant of public participa- tion. My comments are limited to the former possibility since it appears over the next decade or so to be the more imperative approach.

The obvious and logical choice for nationalization lies in the area of natural monopolies, e.g. urban transport, electricity, telephones and other forms of public utilities. Here it is important to recognize that

1 7 '

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such a policy does no violence to existing local political or social attitudes, since in fact such a policy has been in operation in the Carib- bean for most of this century. Moreover it is not likely to run against any international reaction, since both the U.S.A. and the UK. have supported such policies in this hemisphere before.

As was claimed, the territorial governments have already made use of nationalization of public utilities but there is no uniform pattern in the region. A systematic policy of bringing public utilities under public ownership would put a great deal of the infra-structural decisions within the direct scope of public planning. It would thus allow for a more coherent and systematic approach to the allocation of resources, largely because the public sector would have an increased share of these resources within its direct control. This would also help to amend the structural defect of a small public sector impact on economic activity.

The really significant feature of a public utility industry is that social costs and benefits differ radically from private costs and benefits. This is most obvious in the area of time preferences for investment decisions. Infra-structural development will always have to keep apace with anticipated economic development. This means that decisions are taken now which will be put into operation perhaps a decade or more in the future. Few private companies are prepared to do this. If we take the example of power, power needs in most Caribbean territories tend to double in about a decade. And, despite this almost pre- determined expansion, where the companies have been in private hands, e.g. British Guiana up to 1960 and Jamaica, this has never happened. Expansion is limited to servicing existing customers and expansion into rural areas has not even reached the drawing room stage.

There is also the further argument in support of this policy, that where monopoly power is demonstrably clear it is less intolerable to the social good if this monopoly rested in the hands of the state rather than in private hands. This is so for two important reasons. First, the private hands are likely in the context of the Caribbean to be foreign hands and secondly, with all its limitations the state can be expected and perhaps forced to be more responsible to workers and consumers than foreign capitalists.

People who may be inclined to support this policy may well argue that state ownership is not the solution. But in any survey of the vast literature on the role of regulation and commissions in public utilities, public bodies have never been able to exercise the continuous influence on rate structure and service necessary to keep the industry in tune with the needs of secular growth. Indeed these commissions or Boards of Control have in all cases degenerated into mere arbitration courts.

Recognizing this weakness of regulation should be coupled with a recognition that there are likely to be severe problems of administra- tion, pricing etc., when the industry comes into public hands. It is partly because of this that I would prefer to see the industries national- ized and their boards of direction under the immediate co-ordinating and supervising authority of the planning divisions of the region.

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In conclusion of this point it should be noted that the natural monopolies treated here have been in a sense technologically determined. It seems to me that in the context of the size of the Carib- bean economies and the structural role played by tariff protection that a whole new dimension is being added to the idea of a natural monopoly. But here public attitudes may require a less direct and as a consequence a less effective approach to the question of control.

The third area of improvement is bound up with our notion of structural disequilibria and here the proposal is more of a research character than an immediately operational one and perhaps the Uni- versity has its role to play in servicing this particular planning need.

The improvement I have in mind is an empirical verification of production functions actually in use in the Caribbean. The importance of this I can hardly emphasize since it is my belief that structural disequilibrium may be fostered by irrational entrepreneurial attitudes. It seems to me that among entrepreneurs in the Caribbean that there is a very prevalent notion of the most efficient way of producing some- thing, which is very often the 'American or European way.' When this attitude is translated into concrete circumstances, it means a combination of factors used in production that bears no rational resemblance to the real factor availabilities, or prices, -in the region. Businessmen may believe they are rational in the sense that they believe they face a production function where substitutability of the factors is impossible. In this belief they may not even be aware of any possibilities of substitution. The result is that the functions in actual use have ratios of capital to labour that are too high.

Empirical verification of these functions cannot be based on a straightforward application of existing input/output techniques for three reasons. One is that in the available tables there is not enough disaggregation. Secondly, inter-industry flows are not as significant in economies with such high degrees of specialization in export output. Finally, existing inter-industry flows may be purely accidental or coincidental reflecting no real technological determinants.

The two possible ways out are, firstly, a product analysis. This would examine in selected plants the quantity and quality used of each factor used in the production of the particular product. This can be obtained I have found out, from the data usually available to plant engineers. The second approach is an analysis of processes, i.e., an analysis of the way in which factors are combined to undertake certain 'tasks' in the firm. This approach is "based on the conception that all productive activity can be divided into separate technical processes."

Both of these approaches involve some difficulty. For example, in the product analysis there is the problem of multi-product firms, whilst in the process analysis there is the problem of information on inputs on enough detail, although it is usually suggested that the time cards in plants would yield this data.

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With the information provided here a greater knowledge of the factor proportions problem can be ascertained and the scope of planning to remove disequilibria and reduce unemployment widened. One particular way in which this is possible is to use the data obtained to provide a basis for evolving a plan to control the rate and pattern of mechanization.. Operating with large areas of ignorance it has been possible for firms to make all sorts of outlandish claims about the impact of wages on their costs and the need to mechanize to keep these costs down.

The fourth technique that can be applied is spatial and regional planning. Every economy has a spatial dimension and one cannot ignore this if a comprehensive view of the economy is to be obtained. Despite this there is little evidence that Caribbean planning has any spatial dimension to it. The almost exclusive emphasis in planning to date has been on the performance of the various sectors of the economy. There has been little or no evidence or reference to performance by regions.

It is immediately obvious to any observer of the Caribbean scene that economic development of the area has been accompanied by changing utilization of geographic areas as well as changes in the productivity of different regions. Yet it is possible for planning to proceed in almost total exclusion of the spatial dimensions of the various economies.

Of course it is true that in some Caribbean territories there are Town and Country Planning departments and that these departments have undertaken some physical planning. But there is no clear indica- tion that the economic basis of physical planning is appreciated or that the planning departments have a coherent view of the proper regional balance in the development of the economies.

Perhaps the greatest need for spatial planning lies in the direction of control of population movements. Unemployment in the Caribbean has been associated with the rapid growth of a single city in most territories and the heavy concentrations of population in this urban area. It would appear therefore, that the successful tackling of the unemployment problem must be integrally related to the planning of the spatial distribution of the population. This will mean in most cases the emphasis on population concentration being switched from the present urban areas to areas that are at the moment rural.

But to be successful even in this requires some basic conceptural appraisal of what activities can in a reasonable sense be considered regional in that they must "take place in a region where some other activity is taking place." 4 This basic idea of regional can be sub- divided as suggested by Tinbergen 'into industries that are shiftable and non-shiftable,' examples being textiles and mining respectively. At this stage the spatial dimension can be incorporated into the project analysis which takes place before the plan is drawn up and specific criteria for choosing one region against another introduced.

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What is of further importance from our point of view is that the linear programming technique mentioned at the beginning is also very well suited to help us make decisions on the regional location of economic activity. In addition the control of infra-structural industries, e.g. transport, would provide a strong basis for influencing the location of industries by private entrepreneurs.

There are two final techniques I would like to mention briefly. It seems to me as if there is an urgent necessity for the introduction of direct controls, such as licensing investment, control of foreign exchange and in particular price controls on land prices, rents and home grown foodstuffs. The general level of prices in the Caribbean is closely dependent on export and import prices. Nevertheless prices of domestically produced goods and services have a significant role to play in the two problems of income distribution and inflation. Thus there exists an imperative need to ensure a rate of change in the prices of these goods and services that are consonant with the pattern and rate of economic growth.

This question of price control is not as difficult as it sounds if only because it has already been in much more extensive use in the Caribbean than I am suggesting now. However in some countries, e.g. British Guiana, price control still exists on important commodities, e.g. sugar and rice, which are an important element in determining the community's cost of living. If price increases can be further contained by the reintroduction of rent control then about 25% - 30% of the value of items in the cost of living index can be controlled. This would go some way towards containing the expansion of money costs and would provide a safe-guarding mechanism, to be suitably expanded when the inevitable time for exchange rate adjustments came around. Indeed the extension of direct controls over all items imported and exported could substitute for these exchange rate movements in a way most suited to our interests, but as I said at the outset, recommenda- tions are limited to what is politically and socially feasible. It may be wondered, by some, why I have not stressed the use of fiscal and monetary controls. The reason is that the system of financial markets in the Caribbean is so undeveloped that non-market methods are the only feasible approach.

The last technique I will mention is again almost a research proposal. There appears to me to be three critical variables in planning where the sociological dimensions of the problem need to be elucidated. These are the labour force, entrepreneurial class and the pattern of consumption. But here the need is not for the pioneering, insightful and anecdotal methods so heavily applied in West Indian sociology but for attempts at statistical or quantitative measurements which could be of operational significance in planning.

The rate of increase in the labour force can be specified as a function of a) the rate of population increase and b) the work/leisure ratio of the community. Both .of these variables have economic as well as sociological attributes. The demographers have done a magnificent job in collating all the social, medical and economic data which affect the



rate of population increase, but there is little data from which we can specify a reliable work/leisure ratio. Since the factors dominating this preference are sociological there is need for statistical estimates by the sociologists.

In a sense the same applies for the other two variables. If planning is to be national and not merely public sector in its effect it is clear that the planners must be aware of what forms of threat and/or persuasion would affect entrepreneurial decisions. To do this the minimum information required is an analysis of the factors which affect the outlook, achievements and aspirations of this class.

It should be clear to most that the conception of Planning involved in this paper is very wide and really includes a general conception of public policy. Here the fiscal, monetary, direct, legislative and exemplary controls oí the state are conceived of as the instruments in planning. This conception involves certain very serious problems of co-ordination so that at the very least it can be ensured that these instruments complement rather than hinder each other in pursuit of particular goals. There is abounding evidence that, to date, hindrance has been the major result in the more or less independent use of these planning instruments. Unfortunately neither time nor space permit me to contain a discussion here on the problems of administrative reorganisations.

The conception of planning presented in this paper also involves very serious problems of decentralization, if an effort is to be made to mobilize all of the communities resources. Unfortunately, it is again not possible for me to extend the discussion in this direction. Never- theless, I would like to point out that the institutions most capable of providing this will have to be developed from the local level. The most accessible ones appear to me to be the co-operatives which have never been really given a chance in the Caribbean and which have been stifled by excessive 'outside leadership/ on the part of paternalis- tic Governments.

Finally, there is the almost insuperable problem of implementation and here one recognizes this readily when the heavy dependence of the Caribbean economies on foreign factors are noted. This dependence means that planning techniques may well fail because of the impossi- bility of estimating factors that are so far outside the scope of the internal economy.

C. Y. THOMAS. Department of Economics, University of the West Indies.

NOTES:

1. Havelock ftrewster, "The Pattern of Wages, Price« and Productivity in Jamaica". This wai prepared for the Trade Union Institute, U.W.I, (mimeographed) 1965.

2. "Jamaica's Economic Problems", Daily Gleaner, September, 1964. 3. Havelock Brewster, "National Planning and the Private sector" imimeograpneaj iw.

_ • ^m mm _ ■ it _ >L _. J -,

4. J. Tinbergen. Paper read before a Conference on Planning lecnniques ana m«»n»«, in the Caribbean, published by the Caribbean Organisation cm Planning for Economic

Development in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, 1963. i

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short-term improvements in caribbean economic planning

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