December 2016 | Business View Caribbean

76 77 the world’s major international logistics hubs alongside Singapore, Dubai, and Rotterdam? SAMUDA: “As a government, we are all plugged in to the notion of making Jamaica an attractive destination for transshipment. We have one of the seven best natural harbors in the world; we are ideally located. But, like most of the ports along the eastern seaboard of America, we have had to dredge our port facilities in order to make way for these larger vessels, now coming through the Panama Canal. We are about to start dredging now, so we will be accommodating them in short order. “In addition to that, we are seeking to build out, adjacent to our main Port of Kingston, and also in Montego Bay, logistics facilities to ac- commodate transshipment in a meaningful way. And, of course, to be considered an effective logistics hub, you have to have the basic infra- structure in place, such as multi-modal trans- portation–air, land, sea, and rail. So we are busy at work trying to make sure that all of these infrastructure requirements are in place as soon as possible. So far, we have done extremely well in our ‘soft’ infrastructure. For instance, our tele- communications is quite advanced. Our hard infrastructure –our road system and our trans- portation sector is constantly being improved. We have our challenges, but we are becoming much more advanced in making those facilities that are required, available to the international investing community.” BVM: How do these improvements and up- grades get financed? SAMUDA: “In some instances, we have inves- tors who underwrite costs that are not funded from the public purse. For instance, our road network system that was recently completed – the north/south highway–was constructed by the Chinese, utilizing their own funding; and they get their revenues through the tolls. This is the sort of public/private partnership that we’re seeking to encourage, where we, in some instances, will be required to offer our share of the investment, such as land, and they will put up the necessary capital to build out the infra- structure and collect their revenues from the type of business that they engage in.That’s the model that we’re trying to adopt because we are coming out of a difficult economic period and we don’t have the fiscal strength to accommodate any kind of investment based on loans.We’re trying to maintain our debt-to-GDP ratio by containing our exposure and encouraging foreign investors to come in and partner with us.” BVM: On the Ministry’s website it says that it is charged with ‘spearheading the modern- ization of industry.’What specific programs or agendas address that imperative? SAMUDA: “We encourage existing businesses to modernize their equipment and to introduce new technology. And through the application of this new technology, output will be much more MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY - JAMAICA