KINGSTON, Jamaica — Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Senator Aubyn Hill, says Jamaica must significantly boost its exports in order to reverse a 61-year trade deficit.

He made the call in the Senate on Friday during his contribution to the 2024/25 State of the Nation Debate.

Hill pointed out that Jamaica has recorded a positive trade balance just once in its 62 years of independence. He said that since he has headed the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce “…I have made it my private and public business to encourage every business operator in this country to find new ways to create and produce new products and services to export to existing and new markets overseas.”

“Our trade balance numbers force the export imperative on all of us in this country,” he stated.

He told the Upper House thatm “In the 62 years of Jamaica’s independence, we have had 61 years of negative trade balances. The last time Jamaica recorded a positive trade balance was in 1966. That long negative record is untenable, especially since the trade balance keeps widening as we continue to import a lot more than we export.”

“Jamaica has no choice but to export exponentially more, a great deal more, than we currently sell to buyers overseas,” he added.

Hill pointed out that with a population of fewer than three million people with a relatively low per capita gross domestic product of just under US$7,000, “We will not become a very wealthy country selling to only this relatively small population. We must create new product and services to sell in rich markets and buyers overseas”.

He highlighted areas that Jamaica can exploit, noting that demand for Jamaican orchard crops — ackee, breadfruit, mango and avocado — in Diaspora markets is very large and unmet.

“This means that Jamaica has a supply problem, not a demand problem. We must, therefore, find investors, locally, regionally and internationally, to develop farms that very likely might follow a mother farm concept where a big farmer sets up an agro-processing facility to which many smaller farmers will sell the required farm produce.”

Hill said other areas of growth would include turning Jamaica into the logistics hub of the Caribbean.

“As we focus on Special Economic Zones (SEZ), the government of Jamaica may just have to spend important sums of money on infrastructure to de-risk the first Special Economic Zone to entice the first logistic hub investors to the SEZ.

“Another growth sector will be to increase our financial services products such as segregated accounts and general and limited partnerships under the recently-amended Jamaica International Financial Services Authority (JIFSA) legislation to attract high-level financial services clients,” said Hill.

The Government senator also said Jamaica must expand its knowledge processing outsourcing business to move up the value chain.

“Moving up the knowledge and skills hierarchy and up the value chain to attract higher salaries for well-trained Jamaicans is vital because, again, our small population will militate against us becoming a major production centre in the near term,” he stated.

“This reality therefore necessitates us as Jamaicans using a higher level of knowledge to provide services that our neighbours and other persons in markets farther afield will want to buy,” he said.

“The simple truth is that Jamaica has no alternative but to go for much higher economic growth, and much greater and exponential exports will have to form the main path to that growth and prosperity destination,” Hill concluded.