In “Winter is coming in Puerto Rico’’ (Editorial, March 5), the Globe correctly points out that the austerity plan laid for Puerto Rico mistakenly pays little, if any, attention to the key drivers for growing the economy. We need only look at Greece to see how such a program might play out. Faced with Greece’s mounting and underreported debt following the global recession of 2009, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and private banks joined together to impose strict controls over government spending. The result, seven years later, is an economy still tittering on the edge of collapse.

What is called for in Puerto Rico, in addition to reining in a bloated government budget, is a combination of pro-growth stimuli and debt-reduction initiatives. On the pro-growth side, what is needed is an update of the successful Operation Bootstrap, which set off the so-called economic miracle of the 1960s.

Additional economic growth would come from revising the antiquated Merchant Marine Act of 1920, which seriously restricts the growth of free trade and imposes usurious fees on goods and services imported to Puerto Rico.

A third measure would restructure the debt that is owed bondholders in a way that reflects the significant tax advantages and yield they have enjoyed over a long period of time.

There are, to be sure, additional proactive growth measures. The objective here is to avoid the long and seemingly endless winter that Greece is experiencing.

Alvin L. Jacobson

Cambridge