ST JAMES, Jamaica — Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says Delano Seiveright’s recent appointment as Minister of State in the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce (MIIC) will advance the long-held goal of linking tourism with other key ministries, praising the former tourism state minister for his role in growing the sector for nearly a decade.

He was speaking Sunday night at the reception ceremony for the Jamaica Product Exchange (JAPEX) trade show, held in collaboration with Montego Bay Reggae Night at Harmony Beach Park.

“I didn’t want to close my comments tonight without making a special word of thanks and appreciation to a former minister of state in tourism, my own son, Delano Seiveright. Minister Seiveright played a pivotal role in repositioning tourism for us over the last nine and a half years. He’s grown, he’s built, he’s learned, he has become knowledgeable, and now he can move to greater things and to bigger places to add value to the process and to partner with tourism now to make sure that the future that we thought of—linking tourism and industry and commerce, and agriculture and the creative industries together—will now begin to realise itself. Because it’s a join-up government that is going to enable us to see tourism not being an entity unto itself—as it is not—but as an integral part of a process that enables the connections of varying elements coming together in a seamless way to create a product with a price and a value. And that’s what we are all about,” Bartlett remarked.

“So I want us to see that in the context of how we’re going to move forward, and for you to begin to visualise the kind of work that we’re going to be doing over the next few weeks,” he added.

Bartlett also noted that he will soon introduce the newly appointed Minister of State, attorney-at-law Tova Hamilton.

“Tonight (Sunday night), I would have brought to introduce to you and to say thanks also to the former minister of state and to introduce the new minister of state. But in keeping with the tradition of how we do things, I have to bring the new minister to the ministry first, and afterwards I take her to the world,” Bartlett said.

“So Minister Tova Hamilton, we meet tomorrow (Monday). We will meet with the staff. Tomorrow, she will be positioned, and then she will be with me tomorrow night when I come back, and certainly Tuesday morning, when we meet the press and we walk the floor of JAPEX, and then you will see the beginnings of the new team,” he added.

The trade show has attracted more than 116 international buyers from 25 countries. It is scheduled for September 21–26 in Montego Bay, St James.

— Horace Hines