Prime Minister Andrew Holness speaking Tuesday afternoon during a round-table luncheon on the second day of the Global Tourism Resilience Conference and Expo at Princess Grand Hotel in Green Island, Hanover. (Photo: Horace Hines)
‘Stand on our own two feet’
Holness again stresses importance of economic independence
GREEN ISLAND, Hanover — Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has reiterated the importance of Jamaica being self-reliant and not dependent on international aid.
His comment comes in the wake of recently announced plans by US President Donald Trump to make dramatic cuts in international aid — a move which could affect developing economies such as Jamaica’s.
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Speaking Tuesday afternoon during a round table luncheon on the second day of the Global Tourism Resilience Conference and Expo at Princess Grand Hotel in Green Island, Hanover, the prime minister stressed the need to establish economic independence in building resilience.
“As Jamaica matures we have to take a kind of different perspective on international aid. Yes, we want to always have the support in partnership but [for] things that we feel are in our interest. But, we recognise that the world is changing, and local taxpayers in foreign countries may not always want to see their tax dollars going to foreign countries and, therefore, we must be prepared to stand on our own two feet with our own resources. It means that we have to take a more responsible way of managing our economy,” Holness said.
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“We have seen discussions again, globally, about the uncertainty of international aid, and there are those who would be very concerned about what will happen to Jamaica. Jamaica has benefited from international aid. We continue to partner with many countries around the world who have their foreign policy, which includes their support through international aid,” he added.
He noted that Jamaica is politically independent, “but that political independence can only be secured if we are also economically independent and so the focus for us, as we speak about resilience, is about our economic independence”.
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The prime minister told participants at the conference, which included a number of foreign nationals, that Jamaica has built fiscal buffers by practising the “biblical principle of putting aside some of your inflow of income and revenue for the rainy, or stormy, or difficult days”.
“Jamaica is one of the first countries in this region to take out a catastrophe bond to be able to deal with the catastrophes that are over and beyond our capacity to address when they happen. But more than that, we manage our resources well. We try not to spend more than what our resources can afford. We try not to borrow more than what we can afford to repay. This is not a rocket science way of running the country, it’s just a practical way of managing the affairs to ensure that whatever happens, Jamaica is still standing,” he said.
Providing examples of Jamaica’s resilience in recent years, Holness recounted that during the 2008/2009 period when the economy was hit by a global economic crisis, it took up to a decade to recover — in contrast to the two years it took to recover from COVID-19.
“Our GDP (gross domestic product) fell off several points; it took us 10 years to get back to the pre-2009 GDP. In 2019 we were hit by a pandemic, and our GDP fell off by several points. Within two years we were back to where we were and better. We lost about 80,000 jobs during the pandemic, and we recovered [to the point] that now we are at our lowest unemployment rate ever,” the prime minister said.
“This is a different Jamaica than the Jamaica that existed a decade ago. We must continue on this path of building our economy with the fiscal buffers and the preparations to deal with shocks,” he added.
Holness also expressed the need for small economies such as Jamaica to diversify to deal with shocks, particularly in the tourism sector.
“In order to be resilient, we must diversify. You cannot rely on four or five industries to carry through the storms that will hit your shores — whether they be geopolitical or natural. So, I like the ideas being discussed in this theme of resilience,” he emphasised.
Arguing that Jamaica must play an active role in changes now being made to the digital landscape, the prime minister said, “The truth is that, historically, we have been spectators to the world-shaping global transformations that have happened… We are now in the fourth industrial revolution; and we’ve missed all of them as a country, but now we are in quite a good position, I believe, to take advantage of the benefits of artificial intelligence. Not to fear it, not to look at it as a replacement of jobs that we have, but how can we use it to improve our productivity and position ourselves as a society that is digitally native,” the prime minister urged.
