Business View Caribbean - Nov 2014 53
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 agriculture and we just have to follow it.
BV: Is it going to be possible, easy, challenging, whatever
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 mandatory 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 really 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 be-
come the world’s fourth international logistics hub.
The current logistics hubs are Singapore, Dubai and
Rotterdam. 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 Ameri-
cas, especially 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 coun-
try in the Western Hemisphere to recognize mainland
China as China way back in the ’60s and ’70s. We rec-
ognized China in September 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 Amer-
icas 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 mainland
China 40 years ago may be on the verge of paying 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-traditional
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 Colum-
bia and Venezuela right now only, and in Central Amer-
ica 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.
JAMAICA
