National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority to oversee national rebuilding efforts

The Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica has an­nounced plans to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion and Re­silience Au­thor­i­ty (NARA) to lead, co­or­di­nate, fast-track and over­see na­tion­al re­build­ing ef­forts in the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

“The NARA will fo­cus on build­ing back bet­ter – safer homes, cli­mate-re­silient in­fra­struc­ture, bet­ter land use plan­ning, re­lo­ca­tion from high-risk zones,” said Prime Min­is­ter, Dr. An­drew Hol­ness.

He said that new in­dus­tries and busi­ness­es will al­so be in­tro­duced to ar­eas that pre­vi­ous­ly had no eco­nom­ic base.

The Prime Min­is­ter, who was ad­dress­ing a press brief­ing on Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa re­cov­ery on Wednes­day said the NARA will be es­tab­lished as a statu­to­ry body with spe­cial pow­ers, and will re­port di­rect­ly to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

In em­pha­sis­ing the ne­ces­si­ty of NARA, Hol­ness ar­gued that ex­ist­ing gov­ern­ment struc­tures, pro­ce­dures, rules, and reg­u­la­tions are not de­signed for cap­i­tal re­con­struc­tion at the emer­gency speed and scale re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate what will be “the largest re­build­ing ef­fort in Ja­maica’s mod­ern his­to­ry.”

He fur­ther con­tend­ed that Ja­maica’s tra­di­tion­al de­cen­tralised ap­proach­es and pro­cure­ment and pub­lic in­vest­ment rules, while ap­pro­pri­ate in nor­mal times, are not de­signed to meet the scale and speed that will be re­quired to im­ple­ment an ef­fec­tive post-Melis­sa re­cov­ery in any prac­ti­cal time-frame.

“Fur­ther­more, hav­ing each agency or min­istry of gov­ern­ment mount its own re­con­struc­tion would, over the longer-term, can­ni­balise op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty and fur­ther af­fect the de­liv­ery of pub­lic ser­vices. In ad­di­tion, a frag­ment­ed min­istry by min­istry ap­proach will not eas­i­ly scale to meet the mag­ni­tude of the re­con­struc­tion chal­lenge. We there­fore need a ded­i­cat­ed re­con­struc­tion ap­pa­ra­tus,” Hol­ness said.

He not­ed that there is na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al prece­dence for this ap­proach, cit­ing its use af­ter Hur­ri­cane Ka­t­ri­na in New Or­leans in 2005, in Can­ter­bury, New Zealand af­ter the Christchurch earth­quake in 2011, and in Japan af­ter the 2011 earth­quake and tsuna­mi.

“In Ja­maica, too, Prime Min­is­ter P.J Pat­ter­son es­tab­lished the Of­fice of Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion (ONR) af­ter Hur­ri­cane Ivan,” the Prime Min­is­ter point­ed out, not­ing that the ONR was set up as a spe­cial unit to co­or­di­nate re­lief and re­con­struc­tion; it was not es­tab­lished by an act of par­lia­ment.

“The NARA will be much larg­er in scope and scale and es­tab­lished un­der spe­cial pur­pose leg­is­la­tion. Giv­en the ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers that will be sought to ex­pe­dite re­con­struc­tion, the NARA will be set up with a sun­set date of five years, re­new­able by Par­lia­ment,” Dr. Hol­ness in­formed.

He out­lined that the au­thor­i­ty’s ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pen­di­ture will be fi­nanced from the na­tion­al bud­get, with the re­cov­ery and re­con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ties to be fi­nanced ini­tial­ly from the Na­tion­al Nat­ur­al Dis­as­ter Re­cov­ery Fund (NNDRF), which was set up to re­ceive the pro­ceeds of Ja­maica’s dis­as­ter risk in­stru­ments.

These in­clude Ja­maica’s cat­a­stro­phe bond, poli­cies with the Caribbean Cat­a­stro­phe Risk In­sur­ance Fa­cil­i­ty (CCRIF) and var­i­ous cred­it con­tin­gent claims with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) and the World Bank to­talling ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$650 mil­lion.

Hol­ness said it is like­ly that the Gov­ern­ment will need to bor­row to fi­nance re­con­struc­tion be­yond what will be avail­able in the NNDRF.

“We have im­me­di­ate ac­cess to ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$500 mil­lion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s (IMF) rapid fi­nanc­ing fa­cil­i­ty (RFI). The RFI fa­cil­i­ty does not come with pol­i­cy con­di­tion­al­i­ty so, we will start this re­con­struc­tion ef­fort with ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.15 bil­lion in im­me­di­ate funds,” he ex­plained.

The Prime Min­is­ter point­ed out that with the World Bank’s Glob­al Rapid Post-Dis­as­ter Dam­age Es­ti­ma­tion (GRADE) re­port in­di­cat­ing that Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa re­sult­ed in US$8.8 bil­lion in phys­i­cal dam­age across the is­land, for which the gov­ern­ment would like­ly be re­spon­si­ble for at least half, there is still a gap that will have to be fund­ed by ad­di­tion­al bor­row­ing.

Mean­while, he in­formed that the Gov­ern­ment will es­tab­lish a high-lev­el pub­lic-pri­vate ad­vi­so­ry board for the NARA, which will in­clude per­sons from civ­il so­ci­ety, tech­ni­cal per­son­nel and mul­ti­lat­er­al and over­seas part­ners.

“It will be a mul­ti-stake­hold­er board that will en­sure that we are mak­ing the right de­ci­sions [and that] there’s trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty,” Dr. Hol­ness said, not­ing that the leg­is­la­tion that gives birth to the NARA will in­cor­po­rate these mech­a­nisms.

Hol­ness not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment will al­so es­tab­lish an in­ter­a­gency co­or­di­nat­ing com­mit­tee, which will en­sure that de­ci­sions are made swift­ly by the heads of ex­e­cut­ing en­ti­ties.

In­ter­na­tion­al en­gi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment, and con­struc­tion and pro­gramme man­age­ment part­ners will al­so be en­gaged.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the NARA will serve as proof of con­cept for a more ag­ile, per­for­mance-dri­ven mod­el of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The NARA will ul­ti­mate­ly pro­vide a blue­print for wider pub­lic sec­tor trans­for­ma­tion, demon­strat­ing how Ja­maica can de­liv­er ma­jor projects faster, more trans­par­ent­ly, and with greater ac­count­abil­i­ty,” he added.