Western Bureau: In an effort to increase their income-generating capacity, the Western Mirror Newspaper has secured a new advertising outlet at the offices of E-ssential Business at Centre Point Plaza in down town Montego Bay.

“Where we are located on Barnett Street (now), we are sometimes inaccessible because of the traffic flow and the parking problem. So I have basically asked them (e-ssential Business) to act as a kind of agency in down town Montego Bay where one can go and place an advertisement,” Lloyd B Smith, managing director of the newspaper said.

The announcement was made at the launch of Ee-ssential Business on Wednesday night.

“We expect that it will bring in another 25 per cent at the outset, hopefully more as we progress. But certainly it will help those persons who cannot get up town to get their ads into the paper without having to come all the way up town,” Smith said.

He added that there were other plans in place that are geared at enhancing the newspaper’s income generating capacity and improving is operations.

The first order of business, Smith said, was to launch their website within the next month or so. And by the second quarter of next year, he said, the company would move into its own building at 4 Cottage Road in the city.

The building, which Smith said is costing the company $20 million to $25 million to build, has been under construction for the past three years.

“We have hesitated to take any loans from the banking system because of the horrendous interest rates, which we have seen, and which have caused many business to go under. We have preferred to build from cash flow so it has taken us longer,” Smith added.

Meanwhile, he said that while the newspaper considered western Jamaica its neich, they were “looking seriously” at expanding their circulation into the United States to include New York and South Florida.

“We feel that western Jamaica is our neich, and we prefer to enhance what we are doing. (But) we have been getting a sustained demand for the paper overseas, especially in communities where we have many people from western Jamaica.

“So we are seriously looking at (expansion into the US) as another thing to pursue in the near future when we’ll perhaps be looking at places like New York and South Florida where we have a lot of Jamaicans from western Jamaica who want to keep in touch with what is happening here,” Smith added.