FORMER Jamaican prime minister Edward Seaga told a group of business leaders on Saturday night that Jamaica’s tourism industry remained the driver of economic development in the country.

“Tourism is the future of this country,” Seaga said at a dinner in his honour at the upscale Sandals Royal Plantation in St Ann. But the former leader of the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) added that he was concerned that tourism infrastructure was not walking hand in hand with accommodation.

He singled out his host, Sandals Resorts chairman Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart as being synonymous with the development and marketing of Jamaica’s tourism product.

“He (Stewart) begins, I’m sure, all the things that he does, from the market end. Some of us begin from the product end. We like the product, we produce it, because we feel people are going to buy it…Butch begins at the market end. I’m going to do it, and do it better…and in so doing he has lifted the image of Jamaica.” said Seaga.

Speaking of his own involvement in Jamaica’s tourism development, he said it was not recorded in ministry papers or Cabinet submissions. However, he told the gathering of friends and associates that the plan to develop the Ocho Rios Town centre was set in motion in February 1966, while he was on a visit to give the keynote address at a function.

A year later, he was instrumental in the purchase of lands now known as Turtle Beach and along with the Urban Development Corporation, the town centre was created.

He also told the group how Dunn’s River was acquired, noting that the property came into government’s hands from a need to clean up an eyesore in the parish.

Earlier, Stewart called Seaga the best finance minister Jamaica had ever had and saluted him for his 43 years in politics. He rolled off a list of accomplishments of the former prime minister, who is now a distinguished professor at the University of the West Indies.

Saluting him for his contribution to several cultural, educational, and financial institutions, Stewart pointed to Seaga’s progressive thinking, even before he assumed the office of prime minister in 1980.

According to Stewart, the Caribbean had a way of forgetting individuals who had given significant contribution to public life. Acknowledging that the practice was a feature of the Caribbean, he said Jamaica appeared to do a better job of forgetting past great public servants. But that practice was “a sure way of not going anywhere in the future”.

“I am a believer for sure that if we can’t have a little respect for the things that have happened in the past, then as a country, we can’t really have much respect for ourselves and the people of the future,” the Sandals chairman said.

-virtuee@jamaicaobserver.com