The National Investment Policy Green Paper and the National Five-Year Manufacturing Growth Strategy were last week tabled in the House of Representatives.

The documents, which were tabled by minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, Leslie Campbell, provides a framework for creating the environment necessary to attract local and foreign-direct investments and to grow Jamaica’s manufacturing industry.

In his remarks, Campbell explained that the National Investment Policy endeavours to position Jamaica as a major player in the global investment community, in an effort to boost economic growth and achieve sustainable development by focusing on business efficiency, public sector cohesiveness, global competitiveness, transparency and sustainability.

“Attracting and facilitating investments in Jamaica relies primarily on creating an environment for sustaining private investment inflows, and the National Investment Policy seeks to create the structures deemed necessary to achieve greater economic growth and development,” he said.

“It represents a new, transformational initiative of the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) for reforming and revolutionising the country’s investment landscape by providing a practical framework that facilitates private investments and coordinates the efforts of all agencies involved in promoting investment in Jamaica,” he added.

Regarding the National Manufacturing Strategy, Campbell said this will help Jamaica’s manufacturing sector to take advantage of the opportunities arising in various international markets.

The main components of the strategy include improving workforce productivity as well as increasing competitiveness and innovation.

“As the anufacturing strategy outlines, we will seek to do this by addressing the challenges and opportunities for growth in the local manufacturing industry; pursuing the initiatives that are essential to propelling the manufacturing sector into realising greater growth and national impact; and creating a national action plan to grow the local manufacturing industry over the next five years,” Campbell stated.

“We are now ready to leverage the initiatives outlined in the document for greater growth and the achievement of the Vision 2030 goal of Jamaica as ‘The place of choice to live, work, raise families, and do business’,” he added.

Among the expected outcomes of the strategy are increased jobs; increased foreign and local-direct investment, comprising new and expanded businesses; increased attractiveness of Jamaica as a business destination; increased contribution to gross domestic product; strengthened domestic supply chains, with a view to import substitution; and increased export sales of manufactured goods and foreign exchange earnings.

The strategy targets the achievement of $81 billion in manufacturing output by 2025 and an annual average growth rate of three per cent over the five-year period. This is up from an output of approximately $66 billion in 2018.