PRIME Minister P J Patterson has raised the prospect of Jamaica positioning Montego Bay, the northwestern coastal city that is at the heart of the country’s tourism industry, as an international business centre.

But even as he, Saturday night, urged private sector leaders in the city to implement projects towards this end, Patterson conceded that a major constraint to the repositioning of the Jamaican economy to high-end, value-added businesses would be the shortage of skilled people in the labour force.

“It must be conceded that a real dilemma facing countries such as Jamaica, striving to achieve global competitiveness, is that the goods and services that entail the highest level of value-added, and which are therefore most likely to be internationally competitive, are often precisely the goods and services that are not labour-intensive,” Patterson said in a prepared text, delivered by his transport and works minister Robert Pickersgill, at the awards banquet of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce.

“We are convinced that the long-term solution to this situation lies in the development of our most important resource – our people – to ensure that the labour force as a whole is highly skilled,” he added.

“We must reposition the Jamaican economy away from the low-skilled, labour-intensive activities which large and populous countries such as those in Asia have a significant competitive edge in the global environment.”

While he did not map a specific or detailed blueprint for this potential transformation, Patterson believed that Montego Bay already had the international recognition, character and underlying infrastructure to become a global business hub.

“Montego Bay with its world-wide recognition and its international travel orientation and with the level of first world infrastructure now in place is particularly well-positioned to become an international business centre in the rank of Miami, Dubai and Hong Kong,” Patterson said in his speech.

“It is up to you to display the entrepreneurial vision to implement private sector-led projects to achieve this goal,” the prime minister said.

Patterson would have predicated his vision for Montego Bay as a global hub on existing and expanding infrastructure in the city – on which he said his administration has placed substantial attention.

For instance, not only is the city already the largest tourist resort with hotel rooms to support the industry, but the privatised Sangster airport is being refurbished and upgraded at a cost of US$200 million. Air Jamaica uses Sangster as its hub.

Montego Bay, and its free zone, is already the island’s major centre for information and communications technology (ICT), hosting several companies offering backroom services to American firms.

Additionally, a highway linking Montego Bay and other north shore towns is underway with significant segments already opened.

But Patterson, hailing the more than US$700 million in foreign direct investment Jamaica attracted last year, said his government was doing more to ensure an investment-friendly environment.

“A review of our investment regime, with special reference to incentives and support measures, is currently underway as we seek to improve the performance and efficiencies of local investments,” he said.

A national export strategy was being developed with the private sector and this, with an international business advisory committee had been developed “to make Jamaica a more diversified services hub. thus widening our focus beyond tourism and telecommunications”, the prime minister added.