ST JAMES, Jamaica — Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Agro-Investment Corporation, Vivion Scully, is already touting the benefits of the Jamaica Agri-Business Invest Forum (JAIF) currently underway in St James.

Scully, who spoke during a welcome event on Wednesday evening, highlighted a trend that he said he has already started to notice.

“In just networking in the crowd earlier, the buzzword has been deals; everybody wants to create deals,” he told the gathering.

“This event, JAIF 2025, as we call it, is more than a forum. It’s going to be a platform where ideas, capital, expertise all converge to create actionable opportunities,” he stated.

He said he now expects that over the next two days, which will have several presentations, strategic partnerships will be announced.

Further to that, a major plank of the event will be its Deal Book initiative that the corporation plans to unveil later Thursday.

“These initiatives that will be unveiled represent meticulous planning and collaboration between public and private sector partners, financial institutions, educational entities and our international partners,” he said.

Speaking with Observer Online, Scully further explained what the Deal Book initiative entailed.

“What we have done is look at what are the opportunities under our umbrella right now and package them in terms of cost of investment, return on investment (ROI) and what are the key stakeholders or agencies that need to be involved in bringing the product to market, and we at Agro Invest are going to facilitate all of that,” he shared.

“It’s about 10 projects where an investor can just pick it and say, ‘I’m interested; here is how I want to move forward with this’, and we’ll be ready to go,” he continued.

He said the Agri-Invest Corporation is proud to play a central role in facilitating these investment opportunities across Jamaica’s agriculture value chain.

“Of course, our mission is to support agribusiness entrepreneurs to foster more creativity in increasing production and driving growth, both for rural communities and the national economy,” he said.

“We want to lift the GDP (gross domestic product) of agriculture past the seven or eight per cent that’s been for the last few years. So, by connecting investors with local producers, processing companies and technology, we aim to strengthen the entire agribusiness ecosystem,” he added.