PAJ to use BPO assets to spur investments in other areas says Holness
The Port Authority of Jamaica [PAJ] is advanced in preparations to bring some of its business process outsourcing [BPO] assets to market to facilitate investments by a wide cross section of persons.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness, says the proceeds will be re-invested in expanding near port logistics assets immediately adjacent to the Kingston Container Terminal and the designated location for the Caymanas Special Economic Zone in St. Catherine.
“This is an important area of opportunity for Jamaica, with the improving competitiveness of our terminals and the trends towards nearshore production and logistics operations in our hemisphere,” Holness said.
He was speaking during the 2022/23 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives last Thursday under the theme: “Building Our Jamaica: Sowing Seeds of Peace, Opportunity and Prosperity”.
Holness said with the PAJ pioneering Jamaica’s BPO industry in the Montego Bay Free Zone and establishing the Portmore Informatics Park in St. Catherine “as the new benchmark of excellence in the sector”, the entity is now looking to monetize some of its investments in the sector.
This, he noted would be done by reinvesting the proceeds to spur development in other economically attractive growth areas.
The prime minister pointed out that this is consistent with the PAJ’s role as an agency of Government that catalyses and stimulates development.
“Its assets are now mature. The [BPO] sector is fairly [buoyant, and] they are generating steady streams of income. Those assets can now be leveraged [and] placed on the stock market, for example, or divested in other ways. The resources [received] from that, we will now use to enter another area where we can be pioneers,” he stated.
Holness maintained that this undertaking will “give us a true new frontier in the logistics business.”
He pointed out that global developments are signalling that “there needs to be a kind of recalibration of world production.”
“Many persons who are producing are saying maybe we need to look in this region a little bit more. So, Jamaica needs to position itself to be able to take advantage of some of that recalibration of global production capacities,” the prime minister underscored.
