In the 61 years between 1960 and 2021 Jamaica produced a positive trade balance in only one of those years. That was a very long time ago in 1966. Over that 61-year period, our trade balance has become progressively worse, and it is a serious and depressing drag-weight on Jamaica’s economic growth performance.

Since 1966 the trade balance has grown wider and wider. Today there is literally a chasm between the vast amount of goods and services we import annually, compared to the relatively measly amount that we export.

I was prompted to ask my research team to provide these trade balance numbers about a year ago when in early May 2022 the Statistical Institute of Jamaica published the 2021 trade figures. They were stark.

For the calendar year 2021, Jamaica imported US$5.975 billion and exported a mere US$1.441 billion to produce a whopping negative trade balance of US$4.534 billion. Figures 1 and 2 show the perennially and ever-growing sharp negative divergence between our strong import numbers and the very weak export ones.

There are a number of compelling reasons we simply must export a lot more. We have a small country surrounded by sea; therefore, we cannot expand our land mass by somehow moving our land borders. We do not have a large population like, say, India (1.4 billion), China (1.3 billion), or the US (350 million). While India’s per capita gross domestic product [GDP] (US$1,961 in 2021) is less than Jamaica’s (US$4,971), given its huge population and a large and growing middle class (between 200-300 million people) India can support substantial economic growth based simple on population size. Jamaica has none of those demographic-scale privileges.

Some important numbers militate against us just trading with ourselves to become a wealthy country. Jamaica’s per capita GDP (the amount each Jamaican would get if the country’s GDP was split among all Jamaicans), is desperately low in Caricom. We are near the bottom. We lead in many things in the Caribbean; per capita GDP is not one of them. The figures are disturbing: Bahamas (26,705.60); St Kitts & Nevis (18,795.90); Barbados (14,800.80); Antigua & Barbuda (14,692.40); Trinidad & Tobago (14,179.60); Guyana (10,857.30); St Lucia (9,362.40); Dominican Republic (8,410.60); Grenada (8,223.30); St Vincent & Grenadines (7,926.70); Suriname (7,008.40); Dominica (6,964.80); Belize (5,733.40); Jamaica (4,971.90); and Haiti (1,283.10).

It is patently clear that we will not become a wealthy country selling to and trading among about only three million relatively poor people. We may not be able to physically invade new lands, but we can travel to and negotiate new markets for Jamaican products and services. That is the path that Jamaica’s “Business Ministry”, the Ministry of Industry Investment and Commerce, has been charting since about the middle of last year.

We simply cannot stay in our Jamaican offices and secure export markets in a very competitive world with inflation and recession clouding the economic landscape. In the six months between October last year and March 2023 I have led four business delegations of between 35-75, primarily business people, to Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican Republic seeking new markets and to strengthen existing ones. We will be travelling to other cities and countries to expand the borders of Jamaica’s markets. The continued strong positive responses from the many executives who travelled with us, spending their own money, is testimony to the benefit they gained from the access a ministerial delegation is able to give them in foreign markets.

These people know that investment has to be made to secure new and economically sensible overseas markets. They know how long we have been contending with ever expanding negative trade balances. Reversing that ingrained trend will not be easy. Only if we tackle that very-big-negative-trade-balance issue head-on will we have any chance of reversing that trend and then, eventually, export more than we import. Business people know that and more Jamaicans need to know it and act on it.

It’s a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (BHAG) but we can do it. We, business, Government, and all Jamaicans have to do it. Nobody is going to fix our negative and burdensome trade balance for us. We have to go and fetch overseas markets for Jamaican products and services.

One of US President Bill Clinton’s major achievements in the second term of his presidency was to have the Government get China accepted in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Jamaica and India joined in January and March, respectively, of 1995. The years of the Clinton presidency were some of the best performing years for the American economy. China was very focused on securing markets in the US and around the world. The record shows that during that same period, Jamaica was primarily interested in getting and announcing new unsustainable loans while our countrymen were reduced to seeking US visas instead of new markets.

The numbers tell us how vitally important it is for any country, but especially any emerging market or developing country, to focus on securing an ever-increasing number of export markets which can afford to buy its products and services. Figure 3 shows that in 2001 when China joined the WTO, on a constant US dollar, 2015 basis, Jamaica’s per capita GDP was US$4,961, China’s was US$2,360 and India’s was US$781. By 2009 China had overtaken Jamaica with a per capita GDP of US$5,129 compared to Jamaica’s of US$5,121 and India’s of US$1,162. The last reported GDP per capita figure was for 2021 at which time China’s had reached US$11,188 compared to Jamaica’s US$4,971 (falling from US$5,307 in 2020), and India’s which was US$1,961. Without question, China became a bulldozing exporting country and had changed, quite phenomenally, not only the per capita GDP of its citizens, but also the quality of life of its people.

Jamaica is using its economic playbook very well with significant recovery in GDP growth since the pandemic, record unemployment since the pandemic, and the reduction of debt to GDP, all at the same. Jamaica is the real positive outlier in the western hemisphere to get those three metrics so symmetrically aligned in the right direction. No other country in the hemisphere can accurately make that claim.

The matter of getting new local and foreign direct investments into our manufacturing, logistics, knowledge outsourcing, agriculture and agri-processing to produce goods and services for export will be the subject of another article.

We are all absolutely obliged to make it a very clear and sustained goal to go and seek new and good export markets. We must take our products and services to new customers in different geographic destinations. Indeed, some of those new customers will very likely be found in existing foreign markets that we have not yet explored sufficiently. The economic growth of our country, the employment possibilities, better salaries, and growing our national wealth all depend on adopting a new and different focus, and sustained effort, in securing new and profitable export markets for Jamaican products and services.

Senator Aubyn Hill is the minister of industry, investment and commerce.