JAMPRO Trade & Investment Jamaica

6 Business View Caribbean away as Chile; we are making cement out of the lime- stone, locally, and that cement has penetrated most of the region.” Edwards stresses that the two Divisions – Investment and Export – work in tandem. “If you look at coffee and cocoa, these are areas where we’re not producing enough. Although we have very fine quality products, we’re not producing enough to satisfy the demand in the international market. So, these are areas where we are encouraging investment to expand into export. There is a very strong link between the export and in- vestment divisions, because a lot of what we do as a country would require investment to facilitate growth.” JAMPRO’s third Division, Corporate Development and Competitiveness, evaluates the business environment and how it can be improved and modernized to make doing business easier for the private sector. Edwards explains the Division’s importance to JAMPRO’s col- laboration with other government bodies: “We liaise with various government agencies and ministries to improve legislation, and, in many cases, enact new legislation. For example, there are some new indus- tries that we are targeting, such as medical tourism, cannabis, and time share, for instance, that needed changes in legislation to be enacted. We look at how we can create legislation and the right policy environ- ment to attract investments into those industries.” The Division also looks at the international rankings of Jamaica’s performance with a series of international reports such as the Global Competitiveness Report, the Doing Business Report of the World Bank, and various indices, such as the Logistics Performance In- dex. JAMPRO directly targets the components of those indices to see how Jamaica can improve its ranking, internationally. In order to fulfill its mission with its vast range of stake - holders, JAMPRO regularly collaborates with organiza- tions whose own missions are closely aligned, includ- ing the Jamaica Exporters Association (JEA) and the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC), among others. Because it reports to the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, it also has weekly meetings with the Minister and his team. “In addition,” says Edwards, “we have what is called the National Competitiveness Council, which is chaired by the Minister. And that Council really brings together a wide range of government agencies which are all in-