PRIME Minister Andrew Holness says technology transfer is one of the benefits that Jamaicans will gain from his just-ended historic working visit to India, as it will enhance the island’s embrace of a digital society.

“Our trip to India was of great strategic value for technology transfer to Jamaica, and you’re going to see that impact the daily lives of citizens — whether it relates to the ease of making payments [or] the ease of receiving payments,” Holness told the Jamaica Observer on Saturday after the mass of celebration for the life of well known Justice of the Peace Norma Creary at St Mary’s Parish Church in Port Maria.

“Take, for example, people who are receiving their PATH [Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education] cheques, it always pains my heart to see them having to go to a post office or a postal agency, many of them standing in long lines,” the prime minister said.

“It is a cost of time and effort which increases the pain points and the cost of living. Technology can easily reduce the processing steps and the processing time — and that’s what we are engaged in,” he said, adding that the cost of living can be reduced with a reduction in the number of steps that citizens have to take to access services.

“Jamaica is engaged in creating a digital society. This means the incorporation of technology in all aspects of our daily lives, particularly public life — the delivery of public services, the delivery of financial services, and the delivery of a social safety net that is accessible for all — and India, a developing country but with massive scale, has greater resources to deal with these kinds of technological-related development and in fact they have solved it, and they have created a road map. What we intend to do is not to reinvent the wheel but use what countries like India have created and have made available to make it possible for the Jamaican people to benefit from it,” added Holness whose four-day bilateral visit last week was the first of its kind by a Jamaican head of Government to India.

He said there are other benefits from the visit that he will announce later, among them a connection with the Indian private sector as well as a memorandum of understanding between both countries on sports, which he described as “quite comprehensive”.

“The next phase of our Administration, having settled what I like to call the fiscal uncertainties, we are now going to go with a big push for growth — and building a strong partnership with India is a part of that growth thrust,” the prime minister said.