On Monday, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), held its sixth and final Empower Jamaica forum under the theme ‘Leveraging logistics, digital transformation and talent to strengthen Jamaica’s competitiveness and resilience’.

The official welcome was given by forum moderator, the very accomplished Eleanor Jones, who has just stepped down as chair of the PSOJ’s Energy and Environment Committee. She noted the key goal of the forum was to identify practical recommendations to remove “bottlenecks” for public-private partnerships, connectivity, generally, and making Jamaica’s labour force “future-ready”.

In his opening remarks, PSOJ President Patrick Hylton described himself as having a bias for action and results. He said there is a time to talk, a time to reason, and a time to research, but ultimately, there comes a time to act, as it is action that brings results, and we are all familiar with the issues. He listed them as “how quickly our goods move through our ports, how easily businesses can access government services, how efficiently companies can adopt new technology, how effectively we develop talent, and how successfully Jamaican companies can scale and compete not only regionally, but internationally”.

Hylton further added that these issues “affect investment decisions, they affect operating costs, they affect productivity, they affect jobs,[and] they affect growth”.

According to him, we don’t have the liberty to resolve these issues slowly, as speed is a competitive advantage in capturing value, and time has value dependent on effective implementation. He argued that Jamaica has all the necessary studies, reports, committees, and consultations, but now it is time to execute by removing the constraints affecting business, productivity, and investment growth.

The key questions for him are: “How do we make it easier to do business? How do we make it easier to invest? How do we make it easier to produce and easier to trade from Jamaica? How do we make it easier for Jamaican companies and Jamaican businesses and people to realise their true potential?” Adding that in other societies, some processes — not just in the public sector but also in the private sector — that takes weeks or months in Jamaica, are completed in hours.

The difference, according to Hylton, is due to the fact that people in those places collaborate to set goals they want to achieve, looked at the issues that needed to be resolved, and set about working towards accomplishing them. “I am of the view that the bolder the aspiration, the greater the likelihood of achieving more,” he said. In fact, he continued, “The aspiration must be so unreasonable that it gets your creative juices flowing,” because when people are nervous about what they can accomplish, that is when they become inventive.

Citing the case of Steven Francis — the recently deceased founder and coach of MVP track club — Hylton noted that he was not an athletic specimen by any stretch of the imagination, and if he were to have attempted to sprint 50 metres, “that would represent a serious health hazard”. But that, said Hylton, didn’t stop Francis from producing the greatest athletes in the world and being among the top three greatest coaches to have ever lived.

Hylton noted that prior to MVP, Jamaican students would go abroad to train to become world-class athletes, but Francis decided it could be done right here on a dirt track. This is a model for what all of us can achieve, he said, if we just dare to dream and think big and have the discipline to stay the course and execute.

Other than customer obsession and embracing technology, Hylton’s other key is people; meaning, while skills, competencies, and capabilities are all important, the most important thing is to hire for mindset and not qualifications. He observed that Buddha said it beautifully, “What we think, we become.”

In her presentation, IDB Country Representative Natacha Marzolf noted that while Jamaica has unique strategic advantages in logistics, geography alone does not create competitiveness. Competitiveness depends on how efficiently goods, services, people, and information move across the economy; how the regulatory framework provides enforceable rules and regulations to attract investors; how effectively governmental institutions coordinate and adapt digitally; and how people carry out their jobs every day with commitment, discipline, and transparency.

It also depends on whether infrastructure investments are resilient, whether trade systems are integrated and predictable, and whether public policy and private initiative are aligned around shared priorities.

She added that Jamaica now needs to deal with changing supply chains; the transformation in how firms produce, trade, and serve customers due to artificial intelligence and machine learning; the continuing tests to infrastructure and business continuity from climate and natural disasters; and employers need for new combinations of technical, digital, and managerial skills.

Jamaica’s response, she said, must, therefore, be equally integrated — linking physical infrastructure with digital systems, investment with institutional reform, a rule of law that is enforced, and economic opportunity for people.

The IDB is strengthening the enabling environment for private investment and public-private partnerships, through, for example, the Jamaica Public Private Partnership Project Preparation Facility, as well as supporting Jamaica in strengthening workforce skills and employability by upskilling and re-skilling.

The last panel of the day spoke on Future-ready Talent: Building Jamaica’s Workforce for the Digital Logistics Economy, moderated by Dulce Baptista. Her boss, Pablo Ibarraran, the IDB’s division chief for social protection and labour markets, was a member of the panel, which also included Professor Ibrahim Ajagunna from the Caribbean Maritime University; Dr Taneisha Ingleton, managing director of HEART/NSTA Trust; PSOJ Vice-President Mariame Mcintosh Robinson; and Mona Business School’s Diane Edwards.

We will cover the conclusions of Ibarraran and his fellow panellists, as well as other presentations, including the other two panels on public-private partnerships and trade, respectively, in our next article. It is also noteworthy that Ibarraran will be making a presentation entitled ‘Making Labour Markets Work: Improving Productivity and Workers’ Welfare in Latin America and the Caribbean’ on the IDB’s book on this topic on Thursday, September 10, 2026, at 6:30 pm at The University of the West Indies, Mona.

Keith Collister