“THE best thing that you can give a human being is a job,” Observer chairman, Gordon “Butch” Stewart said yesterday as he lamented Jamaica’s high unemployment rate.

“We can’t keep on exporting all the youngsters that come out of school,” Stewart told a luncheon he hosted for nominees of the annual Business Observer Business Leader Award, at the newspaper offices, Beechwood Avenue in Kingston.

Stewart, whose Sandals and ATL Group is among the largest employers in Jamaica and the Caribbean, blamed the state of the Jamaican economy for the joblessness and urged the government to become “business-friendly” in order to spur economic growth.

“The movement of our economy is particularly slow which is partly responsible for the decay and the problems that we have in Jamaica. That is why we have had so much discussion on business-friendly governments, governments that understand the things you do to develop business, to attract investments and to develop your own,” he said.

It was also imperative that the private sector aggressively promote a “business-friendly environment, which, Stewart added, would alleviate many of the critical socio-economic problems currently faced by the nation, such as unemployment.

The latest estimates from the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) show Jamaica’s unemployment level during the last quarter of 2006 at 9.6 per cent of the labour force. Jamaica has one of the lowest growth rates in the region and has averaged a dismal annual GDP growth rate of less than one per cent within the last 10 years.

“The best thing that you can give a human being is a job. When kids leave school (in Jamaica), where do they go to work?” Stewart worried. “Jamaica’s unemployment is embarrassingly high. We have the record for going around in circles as a country.”

Stewart said a country was nothing more than a multiple of business entities, whether large, medium or small. “To the extent that businesses flourish, it is to that extent that the country does well and that the individual man on the street’s quality of life improves,” added the hotel mogul.

The luncheon was one of the activities leading up to the selection of the prestigious 2006 Business Leader Award, which will be announced on Wednesday, May 2, at a gala banquet and dinner at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston.

This year’s nominees are: Stafford and Marilyn Burrowes, owners of Dolphin Cove; Dr Henry Lowe, non-executive chairman of Blue Cross and conceptualiser of Eden Gardens; John Minott of Jamaica Standard Products; Peter McConnell of Trade Winds Citrus Ltd; Charles Ross, CEO of Sterling Asset Management Ltd; and Ralph Smith and Fred Junior Smith of Tropical Tours Group.