Jamaica’s next chapter

[Jangle]

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness on Tuesday opened what he termed the next chapter of Jamaica’s economic transformation by outlining six key pillars of the Government’s growth strategy that, he said, will “move beyond plans and policies and deliver tangible results for the Jamaican people”.

Against the backdrop of a digital display driving home his message that the Administration is set on pivoting to inclusive growth, Holness told guests at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Andrew, and Jamaicans listening and watching a live stream of his policy statement that the time for talk had passed and it is now time for action.

“As we move to the next chapter of our development journey we must now come together and forge a new national consensus on economic growth, just as we united around debt reduction and stabilisation,” Holness said.

“It is time for us to set ambitious goals, to think big, and to focus on policies that will enable Jamaica to realise our immense potential as a nation,” he added.

He listed the key pillars of the growth strategy as: Human capital development; diversification of the country’s economic base and development of new industries; infrastructure development; improving the ease, cost and speed of doing business; security; and inclusive growth which, he said, is in keeping with the Jamaica Social Protection Strategy, 2014, which established the provision of support to the most vulnerable groups in the society.

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2024...-next-chapter/

[Assasin]

Very good speech.. Over to you now Mark Golding.

[Jangle]

Forget about the politricks......


‘A move in the right direction’

PSOJ boss defends Holness’ policy pivot as good for all of Jamaica

Metry Seaga, president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), is dismissing assertions that the Holness administration’s policy shift towards economic growth is aimed at wooing uptown votes, asserting instead that it is the only way for Jamaica to become a major global economy.

“You can always be cynical, and I try not to be. I am viewing it as a move in the right direction, not for uptown or downtown, but for all of Jamaica. The bottom line is that our economy is too small, and we need a bigger economy,” Seaga said yesterday.

“That economy will produce all the things that the people of Jamaica, not uptown or downtown, but every single soul who lives in this country needs. We need to be a richer economy, and one of the ways to do that is to grow the size of the economy, and that is how we’re going to get people to start to feel the benefits,” said Seaga.

“Could we have done it before? The answer is absolutely not. We just didn’t have the platform. We didn’t have the economic stability [or] the fiscal space to do it.


https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/...ight-direction

[Jangle]

Supporting the ‘pivot’

Recent statements by Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his investment and commerce minister, Aubyn Hill, to pivot from macroeconomic stability to robust growth, are important, and perhaps overdue declarations of intent.

For it has long been clear and, as this newspaper observes, that, as critical as macroeconomic stability is, it is not of itself a sufficient condition for stimulating growth at the levels required to extricate Jamaica from its low middle status and to push the island further up the economic food chain.

Now that the government has articulated this policy, or, as Mr Hill put it in the Senate last week, “pivot to and focus on achieving an increasingly strong and sustained economic growth performance”, the next step must be to further flesh out what, despite Mr Holness’ outlines of some specific proposals, remains largely an embryonic programme.

https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/...pporting-pivot