Proper management, marketing of cultural content can increase earnings — Hanna

Thursday, January 12, 2012

MINISTER of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna says that she intends to ensure that Jamaica increase its foreign earnings with the proper management and marketing of its products and content.

Hanna made the comments during a meeting with officials of the Creative Production and Training Centre (CPTC) who called on her on Tuesday.

"I firmly believe that substantially increasing our foreign exchange earnings is a sure path to economic growth for Jamaica and I believe that right now we have a great opportunity to produce, market and sell our cultural content to the world," she said.

Minister Hanna also said that the CPTC must consider widening its basic training offerings to include areas such as sound, lighting and film "so that we can create a cadre of trained professionals for the development of our cultural industries both locally and internationally".

"And as we seek to aggressively market our culture internationally, we must move to strengthen our agencies for increased productivity and efficiency," she emphasised.

Chief executive officer of CPTC, Chantal Hylton-Tonnes, told the minister that the training centre was being was being "revitalised" and was moving back to its "core mandate" which was to the produce and market "cultural content".

She said the CPTC was receiving considerable interest in material produced by the company in countries such as Japan and Australia. She told Minister Hanna that the company was creating cultural content to be sold overseas so that the company could become sustainable

Hylton-Tonnes agreed with Minister Hanna that, "Jamaica's culture was one of its most valuable assets."

Meantime Christopher Samuda, Chairman of the CPTC, was also present at the meeting while Robert Martin, the ministry's permanent secretary; and its principal director for culture, Sydney Bartley sat with the minister.