Cur­tis Williams

Mon­tego Bay Ja­maica

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

The sign­ing of an agree­ment to form a glob­al al­liance of spe­cial eco­nom­ic zones must be about cre­at­ing jobs and putting mon­ey in­to the pock­ets of or­di­nary cit­i­zens says Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­merce, Aubyn Hill.

Speak­ing here at the Mon­tego Bay Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, Hill said the new orgsni­sa­tion will bring to­geth­er 7000 spe­cial eco­nom­ic zones world­wide, in­clud­ing 1000 that will be sci­ence and in­no­va­tion hubs.

Hill not­ed that the chal­lenges fac­ing the world have in­creased with the covid 19 pan­dem­ic and the war in Ukraine and it has added the need for greater nearshoring, re­new­able en­er­gy and changes in the way trade takes place.

He pre­dict­ed that Trade agree­ments were more like­ly to be dif­fi­cult to achieve and this will open op­por­tu­ni­ties for free zones around the world.

The sign­ing comes mere days af­ter Chi­na’s Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go Fang Qiu con­firmed two Chi­nese com­pa­nies will be­come ten­ants at the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, one of T&T's spe­cial eco­nom­ic zones .

The Chi­nese Am­bas­sador took to so­cial me­dia to an­nounce the news of the deal, which he said would be a part of Chi­na’s Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive.

He said, “Glad to know that two Chi­nese com­pa­nies have signed the let­ters of of­fer with eTecK and will be ten­ants at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (PPIE). PPIE is the first project in the Caribbean re­gion to be im­ple­ment­ed un­der the Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive (BRI), and it will serve as a vi­tal plat­form for en­hanc­ing prac­ti­cal co-op­er­a­tion be­tween Chi­na and T&T.”

The Chi­nese Am­bas­sador con­tin­ued, “These two ma­jor light in­dus­try com­pa­nies have con­firmed their in­vest­ment at PPIE, which will un­doubt­ed­ly re­sult in the cre­ation of more jobs, an in­crease in man­u­fac­tured goods ex­ports, and a boost to T&T’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.”

He closed, “I be­lieve that with the two gov­ern­ments’ co-op­er­a­tion, PPIE will be com­plet­ed in the near fu­ture and will at­tract more com­pa­nies to es­tab­lish op­er­a­tions at PPIE!”

Hill de­fend­ed the con­cept of free zones say­ing they cre­ate jobs and while the de­trac­tors talk about poor pay­ing jobs, high turn over and loss of gov­ern­ment rev­enue, that is per­pet­u­at­ed by peo­ple who write in the me­dia and who are un­aware that a job is bet­ter than none and that many use their free zone jobs to up­scale them­selves and be­come man­agers and ma­jor play­ers in their com­pa­nies.

He told Guardian Me­dia that gov­ern­ments earn rev­enue from the tax­es paid by em­ploy­ees and the in­crease in com­merce and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

"We pre­fer to have a slice of a large pie than an en­tire small grape" Hill told Guardian Me­dia.

Hill al­so in­sist­ed that the Caribbean has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate greater trade due to the need for short­er sup­ply chains