Prime Minister Andrew Holness speaking at the Sandals All Mega Jamaica Showcase Event, held at the Montego Bay Conference Centre on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, pointed out the progress the country has made in recent years and the journey it is on to greater prosperity. 

Below is his full address. 

As I look on the audience, let me tell you that you look good, impressive.  

But let me also acknowledge Ambassador Adam Stewart. For those of you who are religious or spiritual, you would agree that Butch is smiling. It is not that he’s smiling that you are walking in his shoes, he’s smiling because you are beating a new pathway. You are facing the challenges, and you are coming up with innovative solutions. 

I’m very happy that I had made a decision to invite you to become an ambassador, an investment ambassador for tourism and I will mark this down as your first public event having had that appointment because the truth be told that this is a Sandals branded event, but I’ve heard Jamaica mentioned many more times than Sandals so clearly, this is about Jamaica. 

I’m very happy as well to be placed at the table where the airline executives are and I was prompted to say, we need more seats but before I could deliver the prompt, I was reassured we will be coming to Jamaica. Is that an accurate report of the message?

Listen, Jamaica is described by a Harvard professor, he’s a professor emeritus now, probably one of the longest serving professors in Harvard, a Jamaican, Professor Orlando Patterson and he described Jamaica as the confounding island.  Jamaica is a place that has achieved so many things. It has achieved so much. It’s been through so many struggles, but every single Jamaican knows that Jamaica can achieve so much more, that this is a country of great potential.  And what people like Adam Stewart is doing is investing in Jamaica’s potential. Sandals represents the best example of Jamaica fulfilling its potential. 

Sandals is a world-class company born right here in Jamaica and what we want to do is to create many more Sandals. And as I again survey the audience, I see many of Jamaica’s captains of industry here who are doing very well, and I dare say doing very well under my administration, but truth be told is that we are not operating at our full potential as yet. We still have far more to accomplish and our friends in the tourism and travel industry who are here, you are very important partners in us achieving our goals.  And I want to thank you for accepting the invitation to be here today, it means a lot to us. And on behalf of all Jamaicans, I say thank you. 

In communications, they usually say that there are two things you pay attention to, what people say about you which is your reputation, and what you say about yourself, which I think that would be your brand. So, a lot has been said about Jamaica over the past couple months and we have travel advisors here and we have had to deal with travel advisories, so I hope that our travel advisors are giving better advice than the travel advisories. I’m sure the ambassador would agree with me.

A lot is being said about Jamaica and the messaging about Jamaica can at times be dissonant.  You know, Jamaica; sun, sea and sand, Jamaica, no problem, beautiful beaches but yet there are other what I describe as noise in the environment that can take away from that message.  Whenever that happens, it is important that you look not just about what is being said about you, but we need to be very clear about what we are saying about ourselves. What are we saying to our friends the travel advisors, the airlines, the booking agents? What are we saying to the people who come here as our customers, visitors every day? 

And so the government realizes that we have to be very clear about the message surrounding Jamaica and so we have hired an international consulting firm to help us with our nation branding because we recognize that what is being said about Jamaica and what is known about Jamaica may be dated and may not always be accurate.

And there are so many other things that are happening in Jamaica that has not yet made it into the consciousness of the world so that Jamaica is properly placed and positioned in the minds of our tourists and visitors and people who would want to do business with us. So, I wanted to point this out to you today that Jamaica is being very proactive and very strategic and instrumental in ensuring that the brand Jamaica remains a powerful and strong brand in the market because after all that is what brings the visitors here; that’s the foundation of our tourism product. This administration is taking our brand, our reputation and our messaging very seriously. 

Jamaica is known, as I’ve said, Adam has said it, Ambassador said it, Jamaica is known for beautiful beaches, sun, sea and sand; three S’s, but we want Jamaica to be known for some other S’s as well. Let me give you some others. We want Jamaica to be known for safety and security. We want Jamaica to be known for sustainability and seamlessness. We want Jamaica to be known for service and satisfaction. And we always want Jamaica to be sexy, part of our brand. 

What we’re trying to do is to add depth to our product, add more dimensions to it, and Jamaica has the raw material to do it.  We have to be very strategic and deliberate in getting it done so for the very first time in our history, we are actually at that point where we can turn our potential into reality. The best way to describe this confounding island at this time is to say that we are at an inflection point. It could be a tipping point or something big is going to happen, positive or negative but I think it’s a positive inflection point. 

We’re at a point where the change in the rate of results are greater than the change in the rate of effort exerted. Meaning that the investments that we are making in our country are at the point where they will start to yield even greater results than the effort that we have put in. It’s an inflection point, but it is also a point of great risk, and those risks have to be very carefully managed and that is what the administration is trying to do.

And the first risk is that the gains that we have made from the decade of sacrifice to change Jamaica’s trajectory as the most indebted country in the region with 150% debt-to-GDP, country that was on the brink of financial collapse,  to change the trajectory from a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the region between 15 and 13%,  to change the trajectory of probably one of the most taxed countries in the region. For a decade or so, the people of Jamaica struggled and sacrificed, and we now have institutionalized fiscal responsibility, solid fiscal management of the resources of the country. 

And Adam has explained to you, told you, now we are almost at full employment, 4.2% unemployment. We have halved our national debt and still projecting to go even lower.  We have had since the administration has been in place, we have not had to contemplate any new or additional taxes. We have introduced certainty into the financial and economic environment, businesses can plan, businesses can make long-term strategic investments without worry. Now, that is the foundation for us now to move to the next step and the next step is to grow the economy.

The challenges for growth are not so much macroeconomic considerations, monetary policy and fiscal policy. They’re more strategic and direct and almost micro in nature.  Like how do we strengthen the connection between tourism and agriculture which is why I’m so happy that when you have brought our visitors, our travel advisors, people in the airline industry, you’ve brought the entire industry together  because for Jamaica to grow using tourism as a major plank of the economy, the connections between tourism and the rest of the economy must be strengthened. And I believe that the effort is there, and I want to thank you as Chairman of the Linkages Committee of the Government that we have seen significant improvement between tourism and the rest of the economy. It’s important that when the advice is given to a visitor to come to Jamaica, the understanding is clear that that visitor is not just helping the hotel, that dollar of that visitor is making its way into the pocket of a poor family who will eventually benefit, grow and develop. 

We have to improve our efficiency as a country in our public administration and bureaucracy. I won’t spend too much time on that, but we also have to improve our infrastructure.  And I know that as we encourage people to visit Jamaica, one of the things that would operate in your mind in giving that advice is to say is visiting Jamaica seamless? Is Jamaica a sustainable environment? Is it a safe and secure environment?  And I want you to know that the administration of the country is working overtime to ensure that not only we create the branding; Jamaica safe, secure, sustainable and seamless, but we are actually doing the things to make that happen. That is why we are making massive investments in our airports. We will be building a new terminal at the Donald Sangster International Airport. Currently, we are improving the Norman Manley International Airport, and we will be building a new international airport in Negril and plans are well advanced for that. So, when we talk about seamlessness, the ability to move around the island quickly. 

When I leave here today, if the rain permits, I will be touring the Montego Bay Perimeter Road. Again, a part of the seamless strategy to connect our airport and our visitors here with the other places in Jamaica, where we have a concentration of hotels. So, the Montego Bay Perimeter Road and all the other roads that are linked to that, will improve our seamlessness. That’s a 225 million US dollar investment, which is already underway and will become usable by mid-next year. So, when you advise visitors to come to Jamaica, they’re coming to a place where the seamlessness factor, the ability to move without hindrance that that is improving.  In addition to that, we have already started the plan for a bypass for Lucea. For those of you who know Lucea, it’s the capital of one of our parish Hanover, but it is considered a bottleneck, and we have plans in place now to build that bypass. 

We have made massive investments in developing an entirely- it’s not new, but it’s really the foundation of tourism in Jamaica and a part of Jamaica in the northeastern end of the island, Portland, Port Antonio. It’s a beautiful, lovely, natural, unspoiled, rustic area with great potential and we have made a massive 320 million US dollar investment in putting in a new roadway on the southeastern coast of the island. Part of that roadway is the extension of a Toll Road Highway heading into St Elizabeth where there’s another area there which we will develop for tourism, but the focus is on developing two parishes, St Thomas and Portland, which will essentially create an entirely new dimension of tourism in Jamaica. And for that, we have not just built the road, but we have also hired an international architectural firm, Gordon Gill and Associates, one of the leading global architects to do a master plan for Portland and Port Antonio in particular, which will see that area emerge as a low density, low intensity, high-value tourism area that will be focused on the environment, ecotourism, sustainable tourism, community tourism.  So, we’re diversifying and ensuring that the product has depth and many dimensions to it. 

We have also made investments in developing the corridor on the north coast between St James and Ocho Rios and there is a two billion US dollar plan to develop that road corridor and indeed going through Ocho Rios so all of that is going to make Jamaica one of the most seamless places that a visitor can come to. That, yes, you’re going to come, you will enjoy the beaches, the lovely sun, and the sand, but you will be able to leave your hotel and go to all the attractions that are there. You will be able to go into the far reaches of the country with ease and get back to your plane or your ship on time. 

We have invested heavily as well in our national security and I very quickly say that as small islands, the history of our country is that we have not always invested in very sophisticated security systems because we’re a small island country, but the truth is the global conditions have changed and we must keep up with the times. And so, the government of Jamaica has made significant investments, actually massive investments. The way to express it, is that the investments that we have made in the last five years would be more than the investments made in the 30 years before. 

So today I can report that all major crimes are down, and homicides are down by 19 percent and the projection is that it will continue to go down. I’m saying all of this just to say that Jamaica is a developing country facing developing country challenges, but Jamaica is also a democracy and not just any democracy, Jamaica is a liberal democracy.  Jamaica has the same shared values as the United States, as Canada, as the UK. We are the same people by values and our development options are respectful of those values and it means that it may take a longer time. There may be challenges that we have to encounter. It means we have to be far more inclusive and patient in the development pathways and strategies that we make but we will develop preserving our values and principles. 

So, when you come to Jamaica, you’re coming to a freedom-loving country, to a democracy that shares the same values that you share. So, use your dollars to support us. Come to Jamaica.