Jamaica facing challenges meeting overseas demand for local products
Minister of Industry, Investment, and Commerce, Senator Aubyn Hill, says Jamaica has a challenge meeting overseas demand for local products.
He was speaking on TVJ’s Smile Jamaica on Wednesday morning amid concerns that Jamaica’s import bill continues to significantly outpace its export earnings.
According to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, the country’s total spending on imports was valued at US$4.3 billion, while earnings from total exports were valued at a little more than US$1 billion from January to July 2024.
Senator Hill said there is need for Jamaican manufacturers to boost production to meet demand on international markets.
“Goya, which is a very big food distributor in the United States, would love to have, the importers in the United States tell me, twenty 40-foot containers of ackee every six to eight weeks. We can only supply them about one. So you can see we have great, great demand. You have ackee, you have breadfruit, which makes gluten-free flour, you have mangoes, you have avocados,” he noted.
Senator Hill added that a cultural shift is necessary to grow more agricultural produce for export. He said the country must shift from the colonial mindset that farming is “something that only poor people and uneducated people do”.
“When you are talking about gluten-free breadfruit, you are talking about science; you are talking about agro processing. You want young farmers in there with lots of energy, lots of new ideas. And we can find the markets, but we must find the investors to invest in Jamaica to grow the products that so many overseas markets and people want,” he urged.
The minister also said manufacturers will have to find new markets and introduce new products to narrow the trade deficit.
Senator Hill wants a consistent and sustained national approach for changing the country’s import-export imbalance similar to the approach taken for reducing Jamaica’s debt-to-GDP ratio.
The minister has also conceded that the importation of raw materials for local production is a big contributing factor to the country’s high import bill.
Senator Hill pointed out that Jamaica imports fuel from Guyana and then processes it to export to the South American country.
“The president of the [Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association], Mr. Sydney Thwaites, he has a very, very successful…petroleum process exporting business and so on. So he has to get his raw material in to be able to process it and re-export. So we’re doing some of that. We need to do a lot more of that. And we need to find new markets for products that we’re making,” he maintained.