Business View Caribbean - Dec 2014 77
ure for whatever crop they’re growing. Now what we are
about to set up is packing and grading houses, and sell
to the hotels and to the restaurants that import their
produce. They only want to buy grade A and grade B, but
there are also grades C, D and E products, so what you
also need to do is set up processing plants to deal with
concentrates and have them available for export. This
is how the United States and Canada deal with agricul-
ture and we just have to follow it.
BV: Is it going to be possible, easy, challenging, what-
ever word you want to ascribe to it, to change the
mindset of some of the players there in the country to
accept the new way of doing things and how manda-
tory it’s going to have to be?
KENNEDY:
I don’t think so. Most of the progressive
companies in Jamaica see it, the government sees it, of
course, because they are backing the plan, and as far
as the farmers are concerned, if they can see that they
will earn more money, they will follow the new rules. The
key is to start it and then maintain it, and not allow it to
die or go back to the old ways, you know?
BV: Given the circumstances you explained, that’s re-
ally not an option, correct?
KENNEDY:
It’s not an option right now. The other thing
that the government is doing is that we want to become
the world’s fourth international logistics hub. The cur-
rent logistics hubs are Singapore, Dubai and Rotter-
dam. There’s no logistics hub for the Americas. China
and Japan and Thailand and the countries in the Far
East want to start exporting more to the Americas, espe-
cially South and Central America, but it’s very expensive
to export to these countries. So what they want to do
is establish terminals, sea terminals, in the Americas.
Jamaica is favored, especially by the Chinese, because
Jamaica was only the second country in the Western
Hemisphere to recognize mainland China as China way
back in the ’60s and ’70s. We recognized China in Sep-
tember 1972.
Cuba recognized mainland China in the late 1960s and
the main reason is that the United States of America
was pushing Taiwan as China and the rest of the Ameri-
cas followed. Mainland China has been very apprecia-
tive of us, and they said yes they’re willing to invest in
Jamaica. Jamaica came to China’s aid in mid-1972,
opened domestic relations with China in September/
October 1972, and the Chinese president told our prime
minister in August of this year that Jamaica dug the well
for the Americas, that is, we were the second ones to
recognize China, China has discovered water in the well
and China wants to share the water now with Jamaica.
So it’s a very, very close relationship between China
and Jamaica right now. China is investing quite a lot of
money in Jamaica right now.
BV: It sounds like the decision to acknowledge main-
land China 40 years ago may be on the verge of pay-
ing off in a very big way.
KENNEDY:
It is. They are investing quite a lot of money
in Jamaica – both concessionary loan financing and
even grant funding.
BV: Are there other countries that would be non-tra-
ditional that you’re trying to establish relationships
with?
KENNEDY:
Because of the logistics hub, we need to
open up trade relations and trade agreements with the
countries of South America. We have with Columbia
and Venezuela right now only, and in Central America
we have with Panama and Costa Rica, but not the rest
of Central America. So both the government and the
private sector are now opening up negotiations to deal
with that.
