Issa Construction

8 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 10, ISSUE 2 property owners who own the land outright and don’t need to add the land cost to the rental rates. Such owners can quickly get a construction loan from the bank and only worry about repaying it without factoring in the cost of the land. These kinds of long-term real estate investments are the most profitable in Jamaica. Business View Magazine: Let’s talk about the main challenges many construction companies face - supply chain issues and skilled labor shortages. Has either of these impacted your business? Peter Issa: We experience skilled labor shortages all the time. Jamaica has a vast pool of skilled labor, but it is not growing fast enough. Because of this, local and overseas construction companies are dipping their hands into the same skilled labor pool, sparking a bidding war. For example, tiling crews don’t work for one company because companies like ours don’t have tiling work all year round. So, they’ll start a job with me paying X per square foot, midway through, they get a call from another developer they’ve worked with, offering twenty or thirty percent I SSA CONSTRUCT ION