Ja­maica is poised for ma­jor de­vel­op­ment in the tourism and en­er­gy sec­tors, with plans ad­vanced for sev­er­al projects to be un­der­tak­en over the short-term. Ad­dress­ing a re­cent JIS think tank, pres­i­dent of JAM­PRO, San­cia Ben­nett Tem­pler, said that the projects will boost Ja­maica's po­si­tion as a ma­jor des­ti­na­tion for do­ing busi­ness.

In terms of tourism, she in­formed that the Fi­es­ta Ho­tel in Hanover will be in­creas­ing ca­pac­i­ty by 1,000 rooms this year, while plans are ad­vanced for the con­struc­tion of a Mar­riott Ho­tel in Kingston. In ad­di­tion, dis­cus­sions are un­der­way to fi­nalise fi­nanc­ing for the Har­mo­ny Cove de­vel­op­ment in Trelawny. As it re­lates to en­er­gy, the JAM­PRO pres­i­dent men­tioned the Ja­maica Pub­lic Ser­vice's (JPS) new $600 mil­lion pow­er fa­cil­i­ty, which was ap­proved by the Of­fice of Util­i­ties Reg­u­la­tion (OUR) last year.

"I be­lieve JPS is al­so do­ing a $30 mil­lion de­vel­op­ment at Mag­goty in St Eliz­a­beth and so there are sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments... on the hori­zon, which should com­mence in the near-term," she stat­ed. Mean­while, as the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to fo­cus on at­tract­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) as a key fea­ture of eco­nom­ic growth, Ben­nett Tem­pler said the agency will be di­ver­si­fy­ing its ge­o­graph­ic reach.

Tar­get­ed ap­proach to in­vest­ment

She said that over the past few years, there have been ma­jor in­vest­ments com­ing out of Spain and Chi­na. The plan is to work close­ly with the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and For­eign Trade to iden­ti­fy prospects in the var­i­ous coun­tries in which Ja­maica has diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Ben­nett Tem­pler said that part of the strat­e­gy is to place mar­ket rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in par­tic­u­lar, coun­tries of in­ter­est "so that those per­sons can iden­ti­fy and make con­tact in or­der to cre­ate a tar­get­ed ap­proach to the whole in­vest­ment ef­fort." "We are say­ing, 'who are the coun­tries that are in­vest­ing else­where in the re­gion that are not cur­rent­ly in Ja­maica and how do we iden­ti­fy and tar­get those coun­tries, get in those board­rooms, and seek to po­si­tion Ja­maica with those firms and at­tract them to come here to Ja­maica'," she said.

She said that JAM­PRO re­cent­ly in­vit­ed ten­ders for rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Chi­na and In­dia. "We feel that Ja­maica's near shore ad­van­tage to the US (Unit­ed States) is go­ing to be of in­ter­est to In­di­an firms," Ben­nett Tem­pler ar­gued, not­ing that in­vestors in Latin Amer­i­ca and the wider Caribbean will al­so be tar­get­ed.

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