Min­is­ter of In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­merce, Aubyn Hill, says now is an op­por­tune time to in­vest in Ja­maica.

He told the Ja­maica Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zone Au­thor­i­ty (JSEZA) Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zone (SEZ) In­vestor brief­ing that there is need for both do­mes­tic and for­eign in­vest­ment in the coun­try, not­ing among the rea­sons, a record low 3.5 per cent un­em­ploy­ment rate, low in­fla­tion, cut in tax­es and re­duc­tion in crime.

Hill said con­se­quent on these and oth­er key fac­tors, Ja­maica is now “sta­ble and in­vestable” and is not the “same Ja­maica that we were 10 years ago”, adding that there are ben­e­fits to be de­rived by in­vest­ing in Ja­maica through SEZs.

“All those goods that you bring in to build up your [op­er­a­tions] will come in du­ty-free. When you start mak­ing mon­ey in year four, year five, six, and you in­vest that mon­ey, the prof­its you make from that, we will charge you on­ly 50 per cent of the cor­po­rate rate.

“The cor­po­rate rate in Ja­maica is now 25 per cent, so you will be pay­ing 12.5 per cent. But you could drop it low­er by how many Ja­maican peo­ple you em­ploy and trade with, and it could go down to 7.75 per cent,” Hill said, adding that there are ben­e­fits for peo­ple who op­er­ate with­in de­vel­op­ments in these SEZs.

“If you’re an op­er­a­tor with­in the mas­ter de­vel­op­er’s place, you get your cus­toms du­ty in and you on­ly pay 12.5 per cent tax, which could al­so go down to 7.75 per cent. So, you see, this would be a lo­gis­tics and man­u­fac­tur­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion pow­er­house in the Caribbean.”

He said in ad­di­tion to the tax ben­e­fits, Ja­maica’s phys­i­cal lo­ca­tion, 90 min­utes from Mi­a­mi, three hours from Pana­ma and sev­en hours from Eu­rope, makes it the cen­tre of the glob­al lo­gis­tics chain.

Hill said that Ja­maica al­so boasts a high­ly skilled and vast ex­per­tise pop­u­la­tion in var­i­ous in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, trade and man­u­fac­tur­ing, and the on­go­ing train­ing, reskilling and up­skilling of the pop­u­lace to meet the de­mands of the rapid­ly evolv­ing glob­al econ­o­my.

“We are say­ing to you there are great op­por­tu­ni­ties here. We are build­ing cor­ri­dors of pros­per­i­ty from Kingston to Mon­tego Bay, from Span­ish Town to Black Riv­er to Ne­gril. Ja­maica of­fers you a strate­gic lo­ca­tion, world-class sea­ports and air­ports, a skilled Eng­lish-speak­ing work force, a sta­ble democ­ra­cy and a busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment that is open, re­form­ing and pro-in­vest­ment,” Hill told the con­fer­ence.

Mean­while, JSEZA says it has ex­pand­ed the SEZ land­scape to at­tract in­vest­ments in sec­tors such as film pro­duc­tion, green en­er­gy, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Fi­nance and Pub­lic Ser­vice Min­is­ter, Fay­val Williams, said SEZs are im­por­tant now more than ever due to the ever-shift­ing glob­al econ­o­my.

“These zones, paired with sound fis­cal pol­i­cy and mod­ern in­fra­struc­ture, are cre­at­ing the en­vi­ron­ment that we need to low­er the cost of do­ing busi­ness, at­tract high-qual­i­ty lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ments, con­nect MSMEs (mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es) to glob­al sup­ply chains and el­e­vate Ja­maica’s com­pet­i­tive­ness on the world stage,” she said.

The event here was held un­der the theme ‘Un­lock­ing In­vest­ment Op­por­tu­ni­ties Through SEZ In­fra­struc­ture and Part­ner­ships’.