18 Dec Interview with Diane Edwards, President, JAMPRO
Could you make a brief summary of the main activities of Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO) in 2020 and 2021, the impact of JAMPRO during these challenging years and, with that, an overall review of the performance of Jamaica and Jamaican companies?
JAMPRO is Jamaica’s economic development agency. That means that we do three things. First, we promote investment, and that investment is local investment and foreign investment, so we do a lot of business matchmaking for international companies with local companies. Second, we promote exports, so we find export markets for Jamaican companies, and we find Jamaican products for international importers, who want products from Jamaica.
The third pillar of what we do is improve the business environment. We have a huge program called the Business Environment Reform Agenda. It’s a very complex document which looks at 69 different pieces of legislation in Jamaica and all the steps we need to take to improve those legislations and regulations to make doing business easier for the private sector.
Jamaica is diversifying its economy and JAMPRO is playing a key role on the development of fintech and outsourcing in Jamaica. Where do we stand with reference to economic diversification? What are the most important sectors of the economy as of today? What are those with the fastest and highest growth potential?
Already Jamaica is number six in the world for starting a business. You can start a business, set up a company and get all the approvals necessary within two days. We are actually very dedicated to improving the business environment, so I just want to expand on this a bit more before I go back to the investment.
In terms of the business environment reform agenda, one of the things we are doing is
promulgating a national investment policy which will dictate the government’s relationship with the private sector from a business point of view. This will clarify a number of different areas for business. So, for instance, there is the Priority Projects Bill, which has already been passed, designating that a project of a large scale (like over $300 million) can be designated priority project of government, which means it will be fast-tracked through the government system.
One of the really exciting features of this business environment reform agenda is the National Business Portal. What that will do is put government processes online for business. So, by this time next year, nine government processes will be fully automated.
Investors will be able to go online, make their applications, track their applications and get their approvals. We’re automating a number of systems and, after the first nine, we’ll have another nine, and another nine, and so we’ll go on as we automate most of the government processes. We are fully dedicated to making life easier for business.
So to go back to where we are in terms of the Jamaican economy, your readers will probably be aware that we have had an IMF program running successfully since 2013. The IMF
program gave the Jamaican government financial support for a program that the Jamaican government designed, and that program was a fiscal and financial stability program, which helped us to improve all the macroeconomic indicators for the Jamaican economy. To give you some indicators, the fiscal deficit was brought down from 11 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009 to a surplus after 2014. The public debt to GDP ratio fell from 142 percent to 94 percent. Our unemployment rate went from 13 percent to 7.2 percent. And this was pre-Covid, so the Jamaican economy was actually in a very good place before Covid-19. The pandemic, of course, had a negative effect on the economy and brought down our GDP by 10 percent. It also brought down tourism, which is one of the biggest industries in Jamaica. We lost a lot of tourism, as you can imagine, in 2020 and through most of 2021. However, the good news from our side is that tourism has already recovered 70 percent. So before Covid, we were attracting 4.3 million tourists per year. And, as I said, it has recovered by 70 percent. We have recovered most of the inbound flights and we are building back the cruise ship arrivals bit by bit.
What is important is that the IMF has projected very high growth for Jamaica over the next year. They expect a growth rate of 14.2% for the second quarter of this year and then 8.25% for the financial year 2021-22. We operate on a financial year from April to March. Next year, of course, it will slow down, but they still project 3.5 percent growth for the next financial year, which is 2022-2023.
So we are expecting high growth in a number of sectors. Some of those sectors are, of course, tourism, but also outsourcing. Jamaica has a very thriving business outsourcing sector, which actually grew 15% during the pandemic, despite all the issues. We now have 44,000 people employed in this industry.
So, concerning the Expo Jamaica, the Caribbean’s premier trade exhibition. When Covid-19 hit, it went virtual, with over 100 suppliers of authentic Jamaican products and services from various industries. How important is the trade exhibition to boost Jamaica’s companies internationally and regionally, and did you arrange other important ones?
Yes, well, the Expo this year went totally virtual. It was an online exhibition, Let’s say in a normal year we would get somewhere in the region of 450 to 500 buyers. That was the last time we did it physically. This time, the number of buyers was reduced so we had about 200 buyers. What was really good about the Expo this year was that people were able to enter the booths virtually, observe the merchandise virtually, and to have business meetings online. So that has worked for us, and we’ve actually found that the virtual trade mission for certain products can work just as well. It’s harder for bigger products like furniture. But for smaller products it works very well. Another point that I think is really important is that business confidence in Jamaica is extremely high. That, I think, is an important indicator for your readers.
You mentioned that JAMPRO promotes export markets. In terms of exports, it is a competitive business, and Jamaica is a relatively small player when competing on the global market. What are the strengths of the Jamaica export sector and Made in Jamaica?
Jamaica has a brand, has a name, has a reputation that resonates all over the world. We have a huge brand ambassador in the form of Bob Marley. Despite the fact that he’s no longer with us, he is still a huge brand ambassador, because his music is played all over the world. Usain Bolt is a huge brand ambassador, because everyone on the planet who watches athletics knows of Usain Bolt. Those countries that play cricket — like Pakistan, like India — they know Chris Gayle.
So I think almost everyone on the planet has heard of Jamaica, and that gives us a tremendous platform to punch above our weight in terms of product recognition and in terms of country recognition. We leverage that Jamaican brand to take some of our consumer products into the world.
We have a cuisine that is really quite unique. In fact, our national dish is called ackee and saltfish. It would be hard for me to interpret that for your readers because ackee is a
fruit. You have to cook it and can’t eat it raw. So this is part of our national dish. Our national dish was voted number two in the world by National Geographic after the hamburger, so that’s pretty great.
It’s healthier than a hamburger.
Oh absolutely, absolutely. We have a lot of food products, and we have a lot of cosmetic products, particularly cosmetics for people of colour.
You probably don’t realize because it’s not a consumer product, but we also export limestone. So there are a number of products — intermediary products like that — we export that people wouldn’t know about. But the more exciting products would be the food products, from fresh fruit like mango, banana and pineapple, to processed foods, and then some nutraceutical seasonings, herbs and different food products.
What I also wanted to say is that I think Jamaica distinguishes itself, because we have what I call homegrown multinationals, several Jamaican companies which have become multinationals and are now investors in foreign countries. We have a Jamaican company, Grace Kennedy Limited, which owns a manufacturing plant in the north of London, which owns a national distribution company in New Jersey and covers the eastern seaboard of the US. We have another company, Jamaica Producers, which has a shipping company that does shipping between the Caribbean and the UK and owns an orange juice processing plant in the Netherland. My point is that there are some big Jamaican companies which have done extremely well internationally, and it’s not just Sandals.
Particularly in the areas of tourism and mining, JAMPRO will play a key role in the staging of Jamaica’s Country Day, which is slated for February, to coincide with Reggae Month. Tell us more, please: what is in the pipeline, as far as JAMPRO’s connection is concerned, until the end of the Dubai Expo?
I want to say two things: the first is that JAMPRO has recently staged its first All Virtual Investment Conference. Your readers, if they want to see, they can access a whole library of Jamaican content, where they can hear from the Prime Minister, Minister of Industry, and ministries very close to foreign affairs and foreign trade.
And then there were a number of key businesspeople. We held interviews and panel discussions on all the sectors of importance to Jamaica. In addition to tourism and business process outsourcing, logistics is a critical area where we feel there will be real resonance with Dubai and UAE, because Jamaica has a mission to become the logistics centre of the Caribbean.
Logistics is an important opportunity because the location of Kingston and the port of Kingston are critical to the whole eastern seaboard of the US. Vessels, for instance, coming from China through the Panama to the US have to pass Jamaica. We also have the most modern port in the region, which is managed by CMA CGM, a French Chinese company.
I think there is a real opportunity for UAE companies to base themselves in Jamaica and set up distribution centres here that can feed into the rest of the region. That will be one of the key messages that we will be speaking about when we come to Dubai Expo. I just want you to encourage your readers to go online to Jamaica.com, which is our website. There they will be able to log on to the content from our conference which was called Explore.
They can listen to information on Jamaica to their heart’s content. In addition to logistics, we have manufacturing, agribusiness. There’s a huge opportunity for agribusiness in Jamaica, particularly to supply North America and the region.
Energy is another area where the UAE and us have commonality, particularly renewable energy. So far, about 13% of Jamaica’s energy delivered by renewables, but our ambition is to increase that, to more than double that. By 2030, we want to have 30% of our energy supplied by renewables. And the government will be coming to market with an RFP, a request for proposal, by early next year. We will be looking for new suppliers of solar energy, wind energy (we already have some wind, but we want to do more), geothermal energy, all different and waste energy. So there’s a real opportunity in the energy sector as well.
Then there is infrastructure development. Here, Jamaica is a very open and liberal economy. Most of our infrastructure has been built in partnership with other countries. For instance, a French company built one of the first highways in Jamaica; China Harbour Engineering has built other highways; Fancy, which is a French company, has built most of the water distribution network; our energy company is owned by Southeast West Power out of Korea, and Marubeni out of Japan. I’m just trying to give you an idea of how open and how international Jamaica is, despite its small size.
This is the message that we want to bring to the Dubai Expo, that Jamaica is small but, as your sailboat sails, it sails to the world.
You know, we feel that we have a lot to offer the Middle East countries and companies, because we have a very open and welcoming attitude to foreign investment. In fact, foreign companies can own assets in Jamaica, including land. There is no restriction on foreign ownership of land in Jamaica, there is no restriction on ownership of any asset, and we do not have exchange control, so there is free movement of repatriation, of profit and dividends to the home country. We have a very active stock exchange, with a lot of listed companies, where trading can be done online and which was the highest performing in the world in 2015 and 2018, as stated by Bloomberg. These are the messages that we will want to bring to Dubai Expo. We think there is a lot of opportunity that we can bring to the table, and so we will be planning to come in February, and hopefully, fingers crossed, the Prime Minister will be able to come with us and we will be able to bring some of these messages to the people who visit the Dubai Expo.
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