Business View Caribbean | April 2019

21 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN APRIL 2019 percent direct impact on GDP and, in the last 2½ years, has grown in GDP contribution by 25 percent. We now employ 120,000 workers in Jamaican tourism - one in five of all the workers. And we provide nearly 60 percent of the foreign exchange. Having a critical understanding of those moving parts and how they relate to economic growth is important to create inclusiveness, so more ordinary Jamaicans and ordinary people can benefit from tourism. “In addition to that is the question of resilience. How do we build capacity to overcome global disruptions that impact tourism economies in, particularly, small countries in a very deleterious way because of their own resource vulnerabilities? How to withstand, recover, respond, and thrive after the effects of devastating climate and seismic events, pandemics, terrorism, cyber crimes, economic recessions, and political disruptions? Tourism-dependent countries, like us in the MINI STRY OF TOUR I SM, JAMA I CA