AT best, Jamaica has an almost endless number of problems that must be solved. Yet, we see some positive developments providing good reason for hope entering 2023.

Let us start with tourism, the bright spark in our economy that continues to perform despite the ravages of COVID-19 which, based on all indications, is proving stubborn in China where it first emerged in 2019 and spread across the globe at warp speed.

Word from the island’s tourism officials is that Jamaica is on track to realise more than US$4 billion from the industry this year. That, we are told, will exceed by at least US$500 million the revenue earned in 2019 — the year before the first case of COVID-19 was reported here.

Additionally, visitors are staying longer on the island and, therefore, are spending more.

According to Mr Donovan White, the director of tourism, in 2019 the average length of stay was about 6.9 nights. “In 2022 we are just over eight nights per visitor,” he told the Jamaica Information Service, adding that the average daily rate in 2019 was approximately US$168 per person, per day, while in 2022 the rate is US$180 per person, per day.

Last Friday the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin) reported economic growth of 5.9 per cent for the quarter ended September 30, 2022 compared with the same quarter in 2021. This, Statin explained, means that economic output, in real terms, has now surpassed the March 2020 level and is 99.9 per cent of the pre-COVID-19 level of December 2019. The agency also reported that during the quarter from July to September the services industries grew by six per cent, while goods-producing industries grew by 5.6 per cent.

Those are encouraging numbers which suggest that, despite the problems, Jamaicans need not start this new year with an overwhelming sense of pessimism.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that last year was a mixed bag of successes and failures. Sadly, the weight on either side of that reality all too often shifts depending on each individual’s political bias.

Yet, there are things that all of us have a vested interest in seeing: We share a common desire to see our beloved country flourish because with that we all stand to benefit — political party supporter or not.

On the nagging issue of crime we reiterate our desire to see it taken out of the partisan political arena so as to facilitate unified treatment as a national scourge against which the full creativity and will of our people can be unleashed. We accept the adversarial nature of our democracy, however we don’t think it is too much to ask our politicians to put the country before their parties and treat crime as the biggest problem that has deprived Jamaica of the progress and prosperity that they so often profess to want for this country.

There are, of course, other problems that need fixing — roads; water supply; education; public order; health care, especially for the most deprived among us, come easily to mind. However, as a country that is “little but tallawah” it is not beyond us to have these problems corrected.

Let us, therefore, not wish, but work as one for a better Jamaica. Greater success is ours for the taking.