LEE CHIN ... we are going to make Jamaica attractive<strong>Joseph Wellington </strong>
Lee Chin says it’s payback time
Businessman reveals that support from Hugh Shearerled Government laid foundation for his success
Michael Lee-Chin has said that he is committed to helping the Jamaican economy achieve a five per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) annual growth rate by 2020 for two basic reasons.
Firstly, he believes that the country has the capacity to replicate the 5.84 per cent growth rate it experienced in 1969 when he left Excelsior High School in Kingston in pursuit of a career and easily landed jobs on the Starward cruise ship and at Alumina Partners (Alpart) in St Elizabeth; or even the 11-plus per cent growth attributed to the local economy in 1970.
Entertainment
March 10, 2025
Reggae crooner Duane Stephenson steps into the spotlight with the release of his fourth studio album Weekend Dude. Blending roots reggae and lovers’ r...
Secondly, he said that he owes the country this much for financing the last three years of his course in civil engineering at McMaster University in Canada, which opened the door to his economic success in that country and eventually made him a multi-billionaire and one of that country’s richest citizens.
“I got a scholarship for three years from Jamaica to complete my education in 1971,” he stated, buttressing his view that without that help he might have missed the mark and disappeared among the over 250,000 Jamaicans who make up almost one per cent of Canada’s population.
Horse Racing, Sports
March 11, 2025
RACE ONE Trainer Cashbert Khwalsingh claimed horse #3 Kai On The Go for owner Gilbert Khwalsingh from Michael Cain Jr for $350,000. One claim was subm...
But Lee-Chin was smart enough to make it out of the faceless immigrant community and, according to the Canadian Business website 2015, move up the billionaires ranking in that country from 37 in 2014 to rank 31 in 2015, with a value of approximately $2.5 billion, a 21 per cent improvement over his 2014 worth.
So at the age of 65, when most Jamaicans start retirement, Lee-Chin has decided that it is payback time, and he is spending more time in his office at the National Commercial Bank’s (NCB) head office at the Atrium in New Kingston, not just overseeing the sensational growth of the NCB, his 2002 post-FINSAC acquisition, but also taking on the challenging task of chairing the country’s most promising economic oversight body, the newly created Economic Growth Council (EGC) which is targeting an annual GDP rate of five per cent per annum.
Latest News, News
March 11, 2025
Finance Minister Fayval Williams has suggested that if there is a change in Government, the financial markets in Jamaica and overseas would react nega...
Speaking in his Atrium office, relaxed and dressed in black slacks and white shirt, Lee-Chin sounds extremely passionate as he explained how a three-year Jamaica Government scholarship, promulgated by a former prime minister and trade union leader, the late Hugh Lawson Shearer, in 1971, gave him his start in Canada.
“Mr Shearer gave me the scholarship for three years until I finished my engineering degree. So, imagine had I not got that scholarship! My parents didn’t have the money,” he noted.
“I had to work for my first year’s room, board, tuition. That was the money I saved from working at Alpart. But I didn’t know where second, third or fourth-year funds were going to come from. I finished first year April 1971, and I got a job on the campus laying sod, or landscaping between May, June and July. I needed C$2,000 for the second year. By the end of July, having worked three months, I had saved C$600. So there was no way I could make C$1,400 in one last month — August. So, I wrote to Mr Shearer, who was then the prime minister of Jamaica and said:
“Prime Minister, I notice that every year you send emissaries to recruit the fourth-year engineers and the graduates. But Sir, I have been writing to your Services Commission at South Camp Road and no one has even paid me bad mind. No one has responded. Sir, you cannot harvest if you don’t sow. He wrote me back and said, next time you come to Jamaica, come and see me.”
Lee Chin said he took C$400 from the C$600 he had saved from his landscaping work that August and travelled to Jamaica to see Shearer.
“He gave me a scholarship for C$5,000 per year. I needed C$2,000, right? so I got a great scholarship. That’s what got me through university. So having that experience, how you think I feel. If I didn’t get that scholarship, who would I be? And that scholarship came from the largesse of the Jamaican people, my people. I never forgot that. That’s why I am motivated and passionate about giving back,” he commented.
He said that after leaving Excelsior, he had no problem getting a job in Jamaica in 1969, because of the level of growth in the economy at the time.
He went to Kingston Wharves and got a job on a cruise ship, the Starward, between Kingston and Port Antonio. Later he was employed at Alpart in the midst of the boom in the bauxite/alumina industry, which allowed him to save the money he needed to go to Canada and enter McMaster University.
“I was lucky, because I was born in a period when there was growth. But what about the young man today leaving high school and wanting a job. What happens to him?
“Are we just going to say, too bad for you, your bad luck? Therefore, I would love to know that every Jamaican has the same opportunity to pursue their own fulfilment, as I have. But that can only come with growth in the economy, to ensure that jobs and opportunities are available,” he pointed out.
Lee-Chin insists, however, that for the EGC to succeed it will need the help of 2.8 million Jamaicans, as well as those in the Diaspora. However, he doesn’t see the need for the Diaspora to make premature demands on the Government in return for its cooperation.
“When I go to invest in India, I don’t set pre-conditions to invest…When I am investing, I don’t ask to be given citizenship or to be represented in the Senate? I consider whether it is a good investment or not. What do I get? I get a great investment that will create wealth for me. So, at the end of the day, what do you want Diaspora? You want to create wealth.
“We are going to make Jamaica so attractive you are going to say, ‘I am Jamaican and the only place I would love to retire is Jamaica. So why don’t I take some of my retirement savings and put it into toll roads in Jamaica.’ A toll road is a great investment.
“’Instead of putting it in the stock market in England or America, why don’t I take some and put it into real estate in Jamaica? Or stocks in Jamaica? Whatever. Buy Jamaican assets, because this man (Lee Chin) came to Jamaica in 2002 and invested, and I know that investment has done well. If he can do it, why can’t I? Why did he come to Jamaica? Because he saw opportunities’,” Lee Chin observed.
On the issue of crime and the negative effect it could have on Jamaica’s economic aspirations, he admitted that it is a deterrent, but suggested that with increased prosperity it would be reduced.
“With prosperity, crime will go down, because it’s like a baby: When the baby is born, he does not come with a gun in his hand. The baby was born innocent. But if you had to go through what some people have to go through, you would say, ‘boy, my life is cheap’.
“Low growth really cheapens lives. So if my life is cheap, your life becomes cheap also, because I don’t care what happens to me. If I don’t care what happens to me, I can kill you. I don’t care if I go sit in jail. In jail, at least I know I will have three meals a day. So with no growth comes a cheapened life. But, we want people to put value to their lives, so there will be less reason to turn to crime,” he said.
SHEARER … gave Lee-Chin scholarship enabling him to finish his studies<strong>Anonymous</strong>
