Dear Editor,

For many years, succeeding governments have not presided over any or meaningful economic growth.

Some decades ago I wrote a letter to editor which said, inter alia, “While I was a student in London and made a Jamaican delegate to a Commonwealth conservative student conference, chaired by Lady Molly Huggins, wife of a former governor of Jamaica, other Caribbean students expressed objection to foreign investment in the Caribbean region.”

In response to my support for foreign investments the other Caribbean delegates heckled me.

Lady Huggins responded, “Mr Crosbie, I see myself as a Jamaican, let me reply to them,” and said, “You see this alleged Great Britain here, look around and you will see the amount of foreign investment without which Britain could not prosper.”

I can recall the late Hugh Shearer loudly repeating what has been well-known — export or die.

It is common sense that we cannot export to earn enough to increase the middle class and earn enough foreign exchange to stabilise the dollar without foreign investments.

Jamaica is not only blessed with talented athletes and scholars but with foreign investments in bauxite, tourism and the return of Red Stripe to invest more in Jamaica.

Growth must happen in line with all this.

Owen S Crosbie

Mandeville, Manchester

oss@cwjamaica.com