Jamaica’s macroeconomic discipline has earned international credibility, but credibility is not the same as resilience. 

A resilient economy is one that can absorb shocks without collapsing into job losses, foreign exchange stress, and widening inequality. The hurricanes and climate disruptions of recent years have made that distinction painfully clear. In a world where extreme weather, geopolitical risk, and supply chain fragility are becoming the norm, Jamaica must diversify how it earns foreign exchange and creates jobs.

Nearshoring, the relocation of production, assembly, and logistics closer to North American markets, offers Jamaica a practical pathway to that diversification. This is not about chasing a trend. It is about inserting Jamaica into a global structural shift that is already reshaping where companies manufacture, store inventory, and fulfil orders. If Jamaica moves decisively, nearshoring can become a second major export engine alongside tourism; one that deepens industrial capability, strengthens balance-of-payments resilience, and creates jobs with clearer productivity pathways.

The economic case: Diversification, the new national insurance policy

Jamaica’s current economic landscape is stable but narrow. Real GDP growth remains modest, estimated at about 1.2 per cent for the first half of 2025, while the services sector continues to dominate overall activity.

That structure leaves the country exposed to external shocks in tourism source markets and to climate events that disrupt infrastructure and livelihoods. Diversification is therefore not a ‘nice-to-have’; it is an economic risk-management strategy.

Nearshoring helps diversify the export base by creating new streams of goods exports and logistics services earnings. Manufacturing and logistics tend to operate on longer-term contracts, repeat orders, and embedded customer relationships, with cash inflows that are often steadier than discretionary travel demand. Over time, this reduces the country’s dependence on a small set of external income drivers and strengthens Jamaica’s ability to finance imports without constant foreign exchange pressure.

Jamaica’s nearshoring advantage: The platform already exists

Jamaica is not starting from scratch. The country’s strongest natural advantage is geography: proximity to North America and positioning along major global shipping lanes. But geography only matters if it is matched by infrastructure and execution—and Jamaica’s port ecosystem is a real asset. The Office of the Prime Minister has highlighted the Port of Kingston’s certified capacity of 3.2 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) and its strong volume growth since investments were completed in 2020. In parallel, the Westlands Expansion Project—described as a US$80 million investment—aims to add container storage capacity and support Jamaica’s global trade ambitions.

The country has also taken a major step on the industrial side with the launch of the Caymanas Special Economic Zone (CSEZ), a project spanning more than 700 acres with direct connectivity to the Port of Kingston, Norman Manley International Airport, and major road and rail networks. It is expected to generate more than 4,000 direct and indirect jobs.

This is the right starting architecture: a port platform, an industrial zone platform, and proximity to the world’s largest consumer market.

What the nearshoring ecosystem must look like

Nearshoring does not succeed because a country has land and incentives. It succeeds because the full ecosystem works on day one. For Jamaica, the ecosystem must be built around fast investor landing, industrial reliability, trade compliance, and workforce readiness.

Fast investor landing means serviced sites, pre-approved factory shells, predictable permitting, and a real single-window system that reduces transaction time across customs, port, and regulatory agencies. Industrial reliability means power, water, drainage, and connectivity designed for production—not just for offices. Trade compliance means modern customs processes, strong standards infrastructure, and sector-specific certifications that let exporters sell into regulated markets. Workforce readiness means a talent pipeline that can support industrial operations, logistics management, quality systems, and digital workflows.

Making nearshoring pay: Keeping value, profits, and spending in Jamaica

A common and legitimate concern is that nearshoring could become another round of foreign direct investment where profits are shipped overseas, and the domestic economy sees little lasting benefit. That outcome is possible when policy is passive. But Jamaica can design nearshoring as a partnership model that keeps a meaningful share of value at home.

The first safeguard is domestic linkages. Nearshoring operations require transport, packaging, maintenance, utilities, food supply, security, and professional services. If Jamaica deliberately develops local supplier capacity and procurement pathways, nearshoring spending circulates through Jamaican firms rather than bypassing them.

The second safeguard is domestic ownership of the underlying assets. Industrial parks, warehouses, cold storage, and logistics facilities are long-life assets with stable cash flows—well-suited to local institutional capital. When Jamaican pension funds, insurers, and local investors own the infrastructure, the rent, interest, and asset appreciation remain in Jamaica even when tenants are multinational firms. That is how nearshoring becomes a domestic wealth-building strategy—not just an FDI attraction strategy.

The third safeguard is wages and productivity. Formal, export-linked jobs create household incomes that are spent locally, generating a multiplier effect across housing, retail, education, transport, and services. The core objective is not merely to host factories, but to raise productivity and incomes so that growth shows up in domestic spending and improved living standards.

What nearshoring could add: Realistic GDP and jobs scenarios

Jamaica’s GDP was about US$19.9 billion in 2024, using World Bank-reported figures. Even a modest industrial layer can therefore make a measurable difference. If nearshoring-related activity adds roughly one per cent of GDP in value-added terms over the medium term, that is about US$200 million per year. A base-case outcome of three per cent of GDP would be about US$600 million annually, and a more ambitious five per cent outcome would approach US$1.0 billion in annual value-added output.

On employment, a conservative build-out could support approximately 8,000 to 12,000 direct jobs across operations, warehousing, and logistics, with additional indirect jobs in transport and services. A base-case build-out could support 25,000 to 35,000 direct jobs, and an ambitious path could reach 45,000 to 60,000 direct jobs over a five–seven-year horizon, particularly if Jamaica develops clusters rather than isolated projects.

HEART/NSTA Trust: The workforce engine that can make or break nearshoring

Investors follow talent. Jamaica’s labour market is already tight, so the workforce challenge is not only about hiring but also about productivity and skills. This is where HEART/NSTA Trust becomes a strategic economic institution. For 2025/26, HEART is targeting enrolment of 84,567 trainees and 48,337 certifications, which can be mobilised as a deliberate pipeline for nearshoring.

To serve nearshoring, training must be mapped directly to the roles that investors need: industrial operations and maintenance, warehouse and inventory systems, cold chain management, quality assurance and standards compliance, and the digital competencies required for modern logistics workflows. The most effective model is an ‘Industry–HEART compact’ where employers co-design curricula, provide equipment exposure or internships, and commit to certification-based hiring.

Actionable policies to accelerate nearshoring capacity

The government’s role is to reduce time, uncertainty, and execution risk, as execution risk is the hidden tax that drives investors elsewhere. The first actionable policy is a published investor-landing timetable for zones like Caymanas: clear deadlines for utilities, factory shells, customs processes, and one-stop approvals.

The second policy is targeted incentives tied to outcomes. Nearshoring incentives should reward export performance, verified job creation, and training commitments, not open-ended concessions. The third policy is trade facilitation and standards infrastructure: faster customs clearance, digital documentation, and the certification capacity required for regulated markets. The fourth policy is industrial reliability and resilience: zones must be built with reliable power, resilient drainage, and redundancy in key systems.

What the private sector must do: Invest, cluster, and scale local firms

The private sector’s role is to build investable projects and supply chains that can scale. Port and logistics operators must continue modernisation and digitisation. Developers and investors must build industrial shells, cold storage, and warehouses that allow firms to start operations quickly. Financial institutions must develop long-term financing structures for industrial real assets and working capital, because nearshoring cannot run on short-term credit alone.

Local businesses must also prepare to become suppliers meeting quality standards, improving governance, adopting digital systems, and forming clusters that can fulfil larger contracts. Nearshoring succeeds when it upgrades domestic firms, not when it sidelines them.

Actionable Pathway: From transshipment to production

Jamaica’s nearshoring opportunity is credible because the building blocks already exist: port capacity, ongoing expansion, a new special economic zone, and a training institution capable of scaling certifications. The missing ingredient is not ambition—it is coordination and speed. If Jamaica builds the ecosystem deliberately, nearshoring can diversify the economy, strengthen resilience, and generate growth that is felt at home.

Ambraee Houslin is a private equity strategist with a strong background in economics and statistics. He has extensive experience in investment banking, corporate finance, and investment research across Jamaica and the Caribbean region. His core expertise includes mergers and acquisitions, capital structuring, and executing complex transactions that drive growth and value creation. Ambraee has led and supported deals spanning strategic acquisitions, private credit facilities, and post-transaction integration strategies for high-impact sectors. Send feedback and comments to [email protected].