On Monday, September 21, on Nationwide News Network, minister with responsibility for works Robert Morgan, commenting on the recent flooding, stated that the Sandy Gully project (built in 1963) currently underway was budgeted at $3 billion, but to fix all the gullies and associated roads in Jamaica would cost $150 billion.

He noted the impact of climate change, observing that a significant portion of the typical monthly rainfall of September, the wettest month, fell in just 90 minutes last Friday afternoon. The first thing to note here is that climate events, such as Friday’s “rain bomb”, are both becoming more common globally and have been truly catastrophic in some countries. This suggests that, based on the metric of just drains alone, the Government was right to continue to prioritise the issue of infrastructure in its recent election campaign as we still have a huge infrastructure deficit from decades of neglect. Indeed, we need to sharply increase our still-low investments in infrastructure as climate change is going to sharply increase our needs. So far we have, rightly, with multilateral help, increased Jamaica’s financial insurance component to climate change, but, in my view, the biggest bang for the buck is now in accelerated physical adaptation.

Coming out of the recent election, therefore, Jamaica urgently needs to achieve consensus on how to invest our limited resources. For example, we could analyse the trade-offs between tax cuts and infrastructure as a project for the Fiscal Research Centre. In addition to the needed physical medium-term infrastructure projects and a new economic reform agenda, including specifically tax reform, we also need to decide quickly what areas are the famous low-hanging fruits that can be implemented relatively quickly at low cost. The systematic cleaning of gullies and a methodology for identifying and fixing potholes early before they become costly craters come to mind as easy examples.

Another urgent approach would be to accelerate the use of the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) to catalyse both new infrastructure and industry partnerships. In his keynote address to the Jamaica Agri-Business Investment Forum last Friday, new Managing Director Dr David Lowe outlined some creative thoughts on the potential role of the DBJ in driving Jamaica’s growth agenda.

Focusing on the role of the DBJ in agriculture, Dr Lowe noted that it is already working with the Jamaica Blue Green Facility (Jamaica being one of the few countries approved globally) which is designed to channel resources into renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate adaptation projects, including those in agriculture. Accessing this fund would, therefore, appear perfect to sharply increase investment in drains and irrigation generally

Other solutions which Dr Lowe said the DBJ is working on include blended financial platforms that combine public and private capital supported by first-loss guarantees and insurance-backed risk-sharing mechanisms. These tools should not only help to make agriculture more bankable, as Dr Lowe noted, but may be ideal to promote venture capital and small business financing generally.

He also noted that the DBJ will be promoting agri-resilience funding windows to facilitate small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), alongside value chain financing solutions that provide working capital through factoring and reverse factoring.

Excitingly, he noted, the DBJ is also looking at agri-tech-enabled micro-financing pilots, linking loans to digital farm management apps and mobile payment systems. By integrating AI-driven satellite data and transaction histories, these solutions aim to strengthen creditworthiness assessments and improve farmers’ access to affordable credit.

He added they intend to promote green and blue bonds to support regenerative agriculture, post-harvest infrastructure, and renewable energy projects while also exploring debt-for-climate swaps to channel sovereign debt savings into agricultural resilience.

A core part of his speech was the critical issue of local food security. He described our agricultural sector as in transition, shifting from traditional, low-tech methods towards modern, data-driven, technology-enhanced approaches. These include precision agriculture, greenhouse production, hydroponics, and the integration of renewable energy solutions such as solar-powered irrigation.

He also noted the launch of DBJ’s new Orbit Fund, which stands for “Opportunities for resilient business to be innovative and transformative”. Describing this $2-billion fund as not only for agriculture, but also for manufacturing, creatives, and health tourism, he noted that it also benefits from a 90 per cent guarantee from the Credit Enhancement Fund (CEF). The CEF, under former interim Managing Director David Wan, has already guaranteed $18 billion that was loaned through the banks. A key aspect of Orbit is that it will lend money at a rate of 8 per cent, one of our lowest-ever commercial rates or comparable to a current car loan.

This move by the DBJ is a concrete step towards helping to fix the critical issue of access to finance generally. It answers the cry of the proverbial businessman who borrowed for a car and then substituted the collateral with a piece of equipment that the bank wouldn’t approve. Recently appointed Senator Keith Duncan had done tremendous ‘Jamaica First’ work in bringing the financial sector together to address this problem, but his work is still unfinished as he had to pivot due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic during his term as Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica president. He then subsequently pivoted to project STAR (Social Transformation and Renewal), a very worthy initiative, and will hopefully now begin a new chapter in his efforts at public service. Perhaps he can encourage the return of the Bruce Golding ‘Jamaica First’ innovation of having committees chaired by the Opposition as a first step in encouraging the needed cross-party collaboration.

The truth is: Only the Government, particularly the prime minister, has the ability to focus sustained attention on these critical economic reform issues. However, the private sector and civil society, generally, has a key role with a different perspective and access to information from the coalface that can provide the necessary feedback to make true partnerships with the Government successful. We, therefore, hope that a revised social partnership mechanism, along with a unified private sector, can unite on a comprehensive reform agenda for Jamaica.

Keith Collister is an economics analyst.

Keith Collister