Last week, at the 10th Caribbean Infrastructure Forum (CARIF) in Miami, roughly 300 leaders — including Jamaica’s own Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness — from more than 30 countries came together to explore how governments, investors, development partners, and industry participants can move from infrastructure ambition to investable opportunity.

In his closing remarks at the end of his keynote speech and interview — the latter with fellow Jamaican Michelle Ottey, principal investment officer and head of transaction advisory services for public-private partnerships in the Caribbean at International Finance Corporation — a week ago on Tuesday about the impact of Hurricane Melissa, as well as welcoming international investment, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Holness said, “Jamaica is safe for you to invest, and Jamaica will yield great returns. Jamaica will become the Singapore of the Caribbean.”

He presented international investors with a broad range of opportunities across energy, water, housing, urban development, ports, airports, logistics, tourism, health care, education, mining, and film. He argued that Jamaica is now preparing for infrastructure development on an unprecedented scale as part of a coordinated transformation which includes roads, ports, airports, logistics operations, schools, health-care facilities, tourism infrastructure, housing, energy, and water.

It was, therefore, very appropriate that Sara Cumming, director and head of corporate finance for the Caribbean at Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets — just off working on Jamaica’s US$1-billion Eurobond capital raise in New York — was a key participant in the panel immediately after the prime minister’s speech on the topic ‘Securing the Next Wave of Capital for Caribbean Infrastructure’.

According to her, one of the most important insights of the discussion was the importance of project-readiness as the foundation of bankability. Lenders and investors need clarity on the project’s scope; revenue model; regulatory framework; risk allocation; and the technical, legal, and financial diligence required to take an informed risk and return decision.

Moreover, she said, they need investable pipelines, not just project pipelines. Governments and sponsors can go further by strengthening project preparation, standardising structures, regionalising regulatory frameworks, and creating greater certainty around procurement, concessions, and risk allocation.

Furthermore, scale matters disproportionately in small island markets. Many Caribbean projects face fixed transaction costs that can be very high relative to their size. Standardising documentation, developing regional approaches, and identifying lenders that can offer comprehensive financing solutions can help make capital deployment more efficient and attractive.

Particularly since Melissa, and indeed before, resilience must be built into the investment case. Across energy, water, transport, digital infrastructure and other essential services, resilience is not simply an additional feature, it is increasingly central to long-term economic value, affordability, and financeability.

Her key takeaway was that the opportunity is not simply to mobilise more capital, but to create the conditions for capital to be deployed more consistently, at greater scale, and with greater impact.

Other panel participants included representatives from Sygnus Capital USA, UK Export Finance, Export Development Canada and the European Union, CIBC Caribbean, and global law firm Dentons.

On the very important topic of energy, the prime minister noted, “Jamaica has one of the highest energy costs in the region, and we are now looking to reduce that by changing our generation capacity to more efficient generation options, including renewables. We have procurement now for approximately 300 megawatts of solar with battery included.”

However, he did not provide any further updates on the promised energy white paper with now only 10 months remaining to the end of the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) licence. One of the panels was entitled ‘Can Caribbean utilities modernise and build resilience while staying financially viable and keeping tariffs affordable’, which notably included JPS CEO Hugh Grant, the conclusions of which we will explore in future articles.

In water, he highlighted the opportunities in pumped hydro storage, long advocated by local engineers such as Howard Chin, correctly arguing, “Water is a big area for us, necessary for resilience-building and necessary for supporting economic growth,” a message even more fundamental during the current drought.

Importantly, the panel discussing ‘Water and Wastewater: Reliability and Rethinking Delivery Models’ included Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change Matthew Samuda, who had also travelled with the prime minister to Miami.

Perhaps most interesting for those recovering from Melissa was his comment on housing and urban development. Prime Minister Holness said Jamaica has an estimated deficit of approximately 150,000 housing solutions, hinting, “We would welcome investor interest, particularly in the affordable and low-income end of the housing market. I think that there is a lucrative business opportunity there for housing.” We will look at the potential for disruptive innovation in this space in future articles.

The prime minister also highlighted Jamaica’s strategic location in terms of ports, airports, logistics, and transportation, or what I have long called “the alternative gateway to the Americas” because we are at the geographic centre of the Caribbean, near major international trade routes, and close to the United States.

He noted that he had established a new entity called the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) to manage some of these large projects in a parallel system that will be more private sector-like in terms of its approvals, management, procurement, and contracting systems. Despite the controversy surrounding its passing, he argued that the economic course of Jamaica is not likely to change with a change of Government because “we got here through a social partnership, and that social partnership is strong. So the political risk in investment in Jamaica would be very limited, if non-existent”.

Keith Collister