Kisha Anderson, treasurer of the People’s National Party (PNP), critiqued the barriers that small business owners face due to a lack of access to financing from lending institutions and has vowed to address this and better help small businesses in Jamaica.

“As a former CEO of a financial institution in Jamaica, I can say it’s a problem that we struggled with in the absence of the government having adequate policy and facilities to make it happen. We will, as the next PNP administration, ensure that we revisit the loan processes for our MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises),” Anderson said in response to a question from Our Today CEO Al Edwards during the 2025 General Election Debate on the Economy on Tuesday.

She emphasised that the PNP recognises MSMEs as an important part of the economy’s growth engine and acknowledges their struggles. “We note that we would have to help them with some amount of business planning. We’d have to help them get themselves ready to borrow. A win-win situation. When they borrow, they are able to grow. When they grow, they’re able to contribute to the economy, and we will be able to get tax revenues from them,” she added.

Julian Robinson also unveiled a bold proposal aimed at drawing informal businesses into the formal economy.

“What we are going to do is remove income tax for MSMEs for the first three years,” he disclosed. “Why? The reason MSMEs remain informal is that they don’t want to pay taxes. But remaining informal limits their growth because they can only get money from friends and families, and a ‘partner draw’. So by removing the income tax for the first three years, they can formalise, they can grow, they can access bank equity funding. That is what we are doing to grow the MSME,” Robinson said.

But the Jamaica Labour Party was quick to push back. Health Minister Christopher Tufton dismissed the PNP’s proposals as “good talk” which isn’t grounded in facts.

“In 2015, just 8,000 companies were registered with the Company Office. In 2024, 23,000 companies, twice that number,” Tufton stated. “Jamaicans are more energised to form companies to come out of the informal sector. The Development Bank of Jamaica over that year period loaned almost US$70 billion, $117 billion of investments, and 86,000 applicants. That is why our economy has started to turn around.”

Tufton also threw political jabs, accusing the PNP of mismanaging previous financial initiatives, calling for “honesty over propaganda”.

“[The PNP] must be careful about hearsay and innuendo. Your FINSAC era… The contractor general accused you of sweetheart deals…You cannot now say that you earn money that is legitimate and above board.”