Editorial | Jamaica productive future

Despite the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and numerous weather-related shocks, Jamaica has achieved what many developing countries still struggle to secure: macroeconomic stability. This accomplishment was built around a national consensus which is still in place.

There is now a need to shift the agenda, moving, as Prime Minister Andrew Holness has signalled, from stability to transformation by raising productivity. This requires significant investment in technology and technical change; not just for labour to work harder.

Jamaica’s current growth model, built around tourism, remittances, construction, real estate, consumption, is not enough. They do not automatically generate high productivity, broad-based innovation, export diversification, or strong domestic linkages.

Development requires the accumulation of capabilities which happens when firms learn, workers acquire new skills, institutions coordinate investment, and technology is absorbed, adapted, and improved. Technical change is the engine room.

Jamaica’s strategy must therefore begin with a clear national objective: to raise productivity across the economy by embedding technology, innovation, and learning in every major sector. The same energy that was devoted to reducing the national debt needs to be transferred to raising productivity.

TECHNOLOGICAL AGE

This calls for an industrial policy for the technological age. Not the old model of protecting inefficient firms indefinitely, but a disciplined partnership between the state, private sector, universities, investors, and workers to build competitive capabilities.

Government must help identify strategic sectors, reduce coordination failures, support research and development, mobilise finance, and insist on measurable performance. Support must be earned, monitored, and withdrawn where firms fail to learn or compete.

This project must be supported by a practical programme that helps firms, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, adopt digital tools, modern management systems, artificial intelligence, robotics where appropriate, energy-efficient equipment, and better logistics. Productivity rises when a hotel, for instance, reduces food waste through data systems, a farm uses sensors and climate-smart irrigation, a factory automates quality control, a garage uses diagnostic technology, or a government agency cuts approval time from months to days.

Jamaica, in this regard, must deepen the transformation of agriculture and food security through science and technology. Modern agriculture is data, genetics, irrigation, cold chains, agro-processing, branding, standards, logistics, and export intelligence. With climate change intensifying, the country needs drought-resistant crops, precision farming, stronger agricultural extension, and investment in food processing. The objective must be to move from raw produce to higher-value food systems.

Jamaica must also reposition tourism as a technology-enabled development platform. The sector can no longer be treated only as rooms, arrivals, and foreign exchange. It must become a driver of local production, digital services, cultural industries, wellness, food supply chains, entertainment, training, and green infrastructure.

ENERGY

Another critical area for transformation is energy. The ongoing war in the Middle East is a reminder of the challenge Jamaica faces. High energy cost has long been a tax on Jamaican competitiveness. Renewable energy, storage, grid modernisation, electric mobility, and energy efficiency must become central to the growth strategy. The aim should not only be cheaper electricity, but industrial competitiveness, climate resilience, and new business opportunities.

For Jamaica to build a digital and innovation economy, it needs to go way beyond having a digital ID. Jamaica should continue to develop a national digital production strategy covering software services, business process outsourcing at higher levels of sophistication, digital finance, cybersecurity, creative technology, animation, music technology, health technology, and educational technology. This requires broadband access, venture finance, coding and engineering skills, intellectual property support, university-industry collaboration, data governance, and export promotion.

Technical change demands high-quality human skills. Jamaica needs a national skills compact linking schools, HEART/NSTA Trust, community colleges, universities, firms, and unions.

In the modern world, even with the growth of AI, the technician, coder, machinist, lab assistant, energy auditor, and data analyst are vital in building national capabilities to drive productivity.

The financial system must do more than trade government paper, finance consumption, structure deals, and reward property speculation. Jamaica needs patient capital for productive investment, innovation funds, credit guarantees for SMEs, development banking instruments, export finance, and venture capital. A technology-driven economy cannot be built on short-term lending alone. Finance must be reconnected to production.

A technologically backward state cannot lead a technological transformation. Development approvals, customs, land titling, tax administration, procurement, health records, school management, policing, and disaster response must be digitised and redesigned. The state must become faster, smarter, cleaner, and more capable.

Stability has bought Jamaica breathing space which it should use to transform production, technology, skills, and institutions. Failure here will cause it to remain trapped in low growth, low productivity, low wages, and high frustration.

Jamaica must become an economy that learns faster, produces better, exports more, wastes less, and gives its people the tools to master the future.

Macroeconomic stability was the first bridge. Technology-driven development must be the road beyond it.