Dear Editor,

The story in Sunday Finance on October 16 about Jacqueline Sutherland and her journey to build an organisation in the Montego Bay Free Zone employing 500 people — starting with five in 2007 — is a great inspiration to others in Jamaica. As was indicated, “She carefully calculated each step of her journey in building what is now a lucrative contact centre enterprise in Jamaica”.

One of the most important statements she was quoted to have said was: “In this business, when the opportunity comes, you have to have the facilities and the space within a 60- to 90-day window”.

The fact is that whereas the Dominican Republic and other islands have built new space each year, Jamaica since 2004 has built very little new space and this has limited our growth. The natural area for growth is Portmore where there is a highly educated population that can literally “walk to work” in the area.

The Factories Corporation (FCJ) has land which can be developed as an ICT Park surrounding the existing 50,000-square foot property in Naggo Head which is leased by e-services, and the National Insurance Fund (NIF) owns a 100-acre block of land in Portmore which can both be developed for ICT Parks.

This is where our focus should be, not on turning agricultural land into an industrial park in the Ferry area

of Caymanas.

Regarding financing the venture, though both FCJ and NIF will need to put up some seed capital to prepare the proposal for the marketplace, there is investment funding from Jamaicans here and in the diaspora, as well as pension funds looking for good investments, and if these proposals are packaged as a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and placed on the stock market, Jamaicans and foreigners will invest.

The FCJ and NIF both need to get on with packaging these projects and let us get Jamaicans working.

Robert Stephens

Pragma Consultants Ltd

rspragma@yahoo.com