Manchester Chamber of Commerce Awards Banquet
Keynote Address
By
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Manchester Chamber of Commerce Awards Banquet
On
March 29, 2025
______________________________________________________________
The leader of the opposition has asked me to apologize for him. He has to attend another event.
Allow me to acknowledge Ms Rhoda Moy Crawford, the Member of Parliament for Central Manchester.
And accompanying her is the Member of Parliament for Northwest Manchester, Mr Mikael Phillips.
Also, the Member of Parliament for East Kingston and the Port Royal, Mr Phillip Paulwell.
I’m not sure there are other Members of the House of Representatives here. I haven’t seen them, but if you are, I’m acknowledging you.
His Worship the Mayor Councillor Donovan Mitchell,
Allow me to acknowledge the President of the Chamber of Commerce and his beautiful wife, Omar Fennell and Mrs Fennell, who have been such wonderful hosts to me. For the few minutes I’ve been at the table, I feel like I know so much about you. You are from Spanish Town. You like St Jago High. You found a beautiful woman in Manchester, and you have decided to start business here.
Allow me as well to acknowledge the other executive members of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and the general business community of Manchester who are gathered here today.
And I must specially acknowledge Mr Kenneth Black. You will appreciate when I say that Mr Black very graciously invited me to break ground for this lovely premises in which we are today and I considered it a particular privilege that you bestowed upon me, that you would have invited me to come and break ground here. I must say, I’m actually very pleased with how it has turned out. It’s looking very well, and I’m hopeful that I will be invited to open the building when it is complete.
Allow me to also acknowledge the businesses that have been awarded here today and acknowledged.
I listened to Captain Omaine Morgan, and he put me in the mind of Merrick Needham. I don’t know how many of you remember Merrick Needham. Merrick Needham was one of Jamaica’s foremost orators and someone who understood protocol very, very, very well. So, commendations Omaine. We don’t do too much oratory these days. We tend to want to dismiss it as being too British, but it is an important skill to be able to deliver presentations with mastery of the language, and I think Omaine has done that very well. Captain, you have done that very well. Congratulations.
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,
Members of the media,
It is indeed my great pleasure to be with you. On my way here, I had a little mishap, which required me to change vehicles, so I was not going to be hindered any at all by any unplanned occurrence because it was absolutely important for me to be here with you this evening. I don’t do too many events in Manchester, and I want the people of Manchester to know that you are an important parish for me and for the government. Therefore, I have a message that I’m sure you will find pleasing, particularly for the people of Manchester.
I thank the Manchester Chamber of Commerce for your continued role as a dynamic advocate for the private sector and your steadfast commitment to economic and community development. Tonight, we celebrate the innovation, resilience, and entrepreneurship that drive our country’s sustainable growth and prosperity. The businesses we recognize this evening represent more than commercial success. They symbolize our shared pursuit of economic stability, employment creation, innovation and sustainable development.
Your initiatives and achievements, whether in finance, education, technology, security, commerce, or community impact, reflect a commitment to excellence and a belief in Jamaica’s promise. Ladies and gentlemen, my government shares this vision and commitment. Our role is to enable, encourage, and energize the private sector, and we remain steadfast in providing clear, decisive leadership in this regard.
The economic progress that we have made over the last decade can only be described as transformational. In my recent budget presentation, I took time to lay out Jamaica’s post-independence economic history and on every metric, whether it be inflation, unemployment, exchange rate, debt-to-GDP ratio, balance of payments, net international reserves, or a measure of poverty. The facts are undeniable. Jamaica today has the strongest economy since our independence.
When I speak of the economy, sometimes there is a sense that we shouldn’t emphasize the economy. There is a sense that, and the best way to describe it, is that the economy ‘can’t nyam.’ I was blown away when the head of the IFC visited Jamaica- I believe it was late last year. He was the former minister of finance of one of the African countries. I believe it might have been Senegal, and he told me a story. He was saying, when he just became the Minister of Finance in Senegal, it may not be Senegal, but I believe it was, he went to a hotel and being from the private sector, he is not used to the accoutrements of authority. And he went to this hotel, sat at a table, and he noticed that the workers at the hotel were all looking at him and they were all wondering and whispering to themselves, isn’t he the new minister of finance. And one brave waiter went over to him and asked him, aren’t you the Minister of Finance? And he said, yes, I’m the Minister of Finance. And he proceeded to tell the waiter about all the great things that he was doing in the economy to get the economy to grow. And then he said, the waiter looked at him and said, ‘but pardon me, sir, but we can’t eat that.’
So, it’s not just Jamaica that this sense of dismissing the economic progress, the economic transformation exists, and it is for a reason why the economic thought of our people is that way. Because the truth is, if you don’t have water in your pipe today, if you go to the supermarket and each time your basket is smaller, and if you have issues with security and potholes in your roads, no matter what we say about the reduction of the debt, the reduction in inflation, your immediate needs will always create a psychological barrier to any announcement of progress for which the benefit is to come in the future. When we have been without for such a long time, it is only a human condition that voters are going to want immediate gratification. It’s just the reality.
As your Prime Minister, as a politician for 27 years, treating with this issue of immediate gratification requires a special skill especially in a competitive democracy where your psychological disposition for immediate gratification can be hijacked and used for political gain by simply making a promise that when we win or if you vote for me, I’m going to give you heaven, I’m going to fix every road, feed every child in school, remove tax from every business, which are some of the other promises. I’m going to give every young person a subsidy for a deposit on a home. There are some other ones, but I don’t remember all of them. And it sounds good, and even persons in this room say, yes, I like that.
And indeed, that has been the nature of our politics, but something has happened in Jamaica in 2025. It may have escaped you. You may not have recognized it, but something has changed in Jamaica. For the first time, promises that were made by politicians were costed. A price was put on it because for too long in our economic history and indeed our social history and in the development of the country, our electorate has never really asked our politicians to price or cost the promises that they make. Because we want satisfaction now, we accept anything that is told to us.
But in this last budget, a price was placed on every promise that was made, and it was not just in the budget but there is an institutional change that has happened in our country, and I’m certain it has passed most of the persons here but Jamaica now has something called a Fiscal Commission. How many of you have heard about that?
It means that the days of impractical promises that would easily catch the eye of the unsuspecting voter, the days of politicians being able to ride on the psychological need for immediate gratification by making empty promises, those days are over.
By the clap, I can tell that there are some people who want those days to continue, but an important part of the transformation of Jamaica is the institution of the Fiscal Commission. What the Fiscal Commission does, its role is to ensure that governments follow the fiscal rules that are in place. Meaning we can’t run a deficit more than a certain percentage of GDP. We have to stick to our commitments to reducing borrowing, so the Fiscal Commission essentially polices what the government will spend on, but it also has the ability to price or cost any other proposed spending either by the government or the opposition. So, there is an independent body that could very well say that what is being proposed doesn’t make sense.
In our last budget, several proposals were made, and the Minister of Finance costed it and showed that those promises didn’t make sense, couldn’t be financed, and would wreck the budget. I’m speaking to an audience of business people and therefore I’m certain that you will immediately appreciate the point that I’m making.
The development of this country cannot be made on empty promises. You can’t come to parliament and make promises and then, when tackled, you get up and say it was not your intention that these would be implemented. In effect, it was an empty promise. Jamaica has changed. For the first time, promises were costed, and the public can see what promises make sense and what does not make sense.
It is an important step for the development of our country because for too long, our electorate has been misled, and our political economy has focused on the wrong things. For the first time, you have a government that has delivered 10 budgets of stability. And when I say this, I know it is hurtful to some people because they want to deny it. They want to dismiss it. They want to say, ‘cho, stability can’t nyam.’ Well, Jamaica today is the most resilient it has been to shocks than at any time before in its history. I just want to give you some facts.
It took us 17 years to recover from the oil price shocks and the socialist experiments of the PNP in the 1970s. It took us 7 years to recover the lost GDP from the financial sector meltdown and the FINSAC crisis in the mid-1990s. And it took us 30 years to get the debt back down to pre-FINSAC levels. It took us 11 years to recover from the global financial crisis that hit us in 2008, but it only took us 3 years to bounce back strongly from the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply shock chain and the overlapping geopolitical crises, which, when you put them collectively, these were the worst shocks that Jamaica has experienced in a hundred years. I want you just to think about it, that during the worst shock that we have experienced, not one public sector worker was laid off.
In Europe, people were laid off. Salaries were cut right here in the Caribbean. People were furloughed. It didn’t happen in Jamaica. We have finally conquered the challenges of macroeconomic instability and excessive debt, which have plagued us for decades. The next challenge that we have to conquer is growth. We have to significantly accelerate our growth rate from 1 to 2%, to 4 to 5%, and of course, my friends pursuing growth does not mean run with it.
We have presented budgets to you without ever running with anything. That is a significant transformation in Jamaica, but more than that, we are presenting a budget in an election year, and it is a balanced budget, a budget filled with, as some commentators call it, goodies. We call it give-backs, and we were able to do that without running a deficit or without putting on any new taxes.
So, as I reiterated in my recent budget presentation, my government remains steadfast in its commitment to maintaining both a balanced budget and introducing no new taxes. Under the fiscal rules, we have the flexibility to run a fiscal deficit of up to 0.3% of GDP. Despite this being a special year, we decided that we will present a balanced budget with no fiscal deficit. This decision underscores our resolve to maintain macroeconomic stability and ensure that we achieve our 60% debt-to-GDP target for 2027/ 2028.
Let me explain how the debt-to-GDP ratio can ‘nyam.’ In other words, how it can be a game changer for Jamaica because sometimes it’s not clearly understood why we are pursuing this path. Our sovereign credit rating, meaning how the global financial markets view Jamaica as a going concern as a business, our sovereign credit rating is now BB- which is just three notches below investment grade. An investment grade would be BBB-. Just to put that in context, our credit rating is higher than the credit rating of Barbados.
Coming from being considered the financial basket case of the Caribbean, the size of the global bond market is just over 60 trillion US dollars. Over 90% of this market is restricted to investment grade bonds only. I wonder if you see this point. It means that today, no matter how much the global market may love Jamaica, 90% of the global pool of capital is by their risk mandate restricted from investing in Jamaica.
Jamaica could become the home for far greater foreign investments than we are getting now if our ratings improved. People would see Jamaica as an investment-grade risk. So once Jamaica achieves investment grade status, the global pool of capital available to Jamaica multiplies ninefold. Also, Jamaica’s risk profile decreases significantly, which means that the cost of capital declines.
Ultimately, that means lower interest rates for all of you who have business here. Business people should be invested in ensuring that Jamaica remains on this very stable and solid fiscal path. Ultimately, that means that everybody in the economy will benefit. This would be a fundamental transformation of the economy so businessmen like Mr Black, who I’m certain you had to do some borrowing for this building here, the interest rates that you would face would be significantly lower. But more than that, businesses and business opportunities, which now seem infeasible, suddenly become investment-worthy because the cost of capital has gone down. And that is the kind of strategic move that we have been making, and which is why you have to focus on the economy and keeping that economy in the forefront of your political decisions.
You can rest assured that you have a government that is committed to the economy, but we also recognize that fiscal discipline alone is not going to be sufficient. We must now grow the economy, and we have said that we’re going to use the ASPIRE model.
A– Access to economic opportunity for all, that is inclusive growth. This is about ensuring that no one is left behind and that all Jamaicans have the opportunity to benefit from economic gains of a growing economy. We are creating pathways to good jobs, supporting small businesses, investing in skills training, and fostering an economy that works for everyone, not just a selected few. As our nation grows, so must the opportunities available to our people, ensuring that the benefits of development reach every community, every household, and every hardworking Jamaican for a better future.
S– For safety and security. As I entered the hall, the deputy superintendent who greeted me, I make it a point of duty to speak with the ground commanders because it’s very important that they are motivated and that they understand the mission. He pointed out to me that you are seeing a 64% decline. That’s fantastic.
A few months ago, that was not the cry. A few months ago, citizens were worried, businesses were worried, but the investments that we have made in men and women and material, in doctrine, in leadership; we are transforming the JCF. And I’m very pleased to see you sitting right here in the front row at the Chamber of Commerce Award Ceremony. Very important that the police is not seen as an adjunct, an auxiliary, but is central to the development of the community, and I want to commend the men and women of the police force and the military who support them here in Manchester for the amazing work that they have done.
Be assured that as Prime Minister, I stand 100% behind the JCF. In murders, we saw a decline by 9% in 2023. People scoffed at it. In 2024, we saw a decline of 19%, and some people said, well, maybe this is just a flash in the pan and year to date, we are seeing a 35% decline, and now I’m seeing everybody want to come and take credit for it.
That was because of the strategic investments and the strategic decisions that were made by the administration as it relates to treating with the matter of crime. It was never a flip of the switch strategy. It can’t be dealt with like that, but with persistence, with strategic use of force, we have been able to bring the crime monster under some form of control. We’re not quite there yet, but the strategy is working. I want you to pay close attention to what I’m about to say.
Since 2016, we have reduced the number of active gangs from 350 to less than 100 today. Pay close attention to what I’m saying here. In the last four weeks, we have had several major seizures of weapons and other contraband coming into our formal ports, including, I was reading in the papers today, that a resident of Manchester was arrested and charged. I want all the criminals in Manchester to hear my voice very clearly. You have no hiding place. All the people who are importing guns into Jamaica, whether you live here or cooperate with criminals abroad, you have no hiding place. I want that message to go out very carefully.
Jamaica has invested heavily in building its national security apparatus. For many years, we have had an unsophisticated national security apparatus. We have invested in improving the sophistication of our security apparatus, and that sophistication is not only in the purchase of equipment, in the training of our officers, but also in building strong diplomatic country-to-country relationships that will help us to undermine the criminal networks that exist across borders. If criminal organizations can cooperate across borders, well, governments must cooperate even strongly across borders to bring them down, eradicate them, and eliminate them. And Jamaica is on a solid pathway, as you would’ve seen recently, with various statements to tackle those gangs who believe that for such a long time they had free space and free reign. No more of that in Jamaica,
We must focus on people. Unemployment is at a record low of 3.5%. Again, some people want to scoff at that and pretend as if there wasn’t a period of time in Jamaica when unemployment was double-digit. Ten years ago, unemployment was above 13% and for young people, it was as high as 20%. It’s not the same Jamaica today as it was 10 years ago.
In fact, and I’m sure my friends Phillip and Mikael can attest to it, that the business community has been saying we have a labour problem; we can’t find enough skilled labour, and I’m sure there are business people in here who are facing that same challenge. We have a skills shortage. One young business person called me and said, listen, prime Minister, I want to bring in some people to work here, but if I can’t get them to come, I’ll just send the operations to Mexico. I want to listen to that statement carefully.
Labour, or rather the lack of skilled labour, has become a constraint on growth. Ten years ago, that was not the problem we had. Certainly, if the economy ‘can’t nyam’, the economy is providing work, but we have a different problem now. Because of the stability of the economy, businesses see a runway to invest. They are looking to expand their operations, but they need skilled labour to be able to complement the availability of capital and the stability of the fiscal environment. And so we are investing heavily in trying to ensure that the marginal labour that we have is brought into the labour force, but with the appropriate skills, knowledge, and attitude.
With HEART, we are literally paying people to learn. Yes, there are so many skills training programmes that we pay you to go and learn, begging you to come out and learn. I was in Browns Town recently, and I was very pleased to see the HEART team on the sidewalk with a little tent encouraging youngsters to come and sign up for the programme because Jamaica is at that point where the environment for business is good, but we need more skilled labour.
Now, I’m the first to tell you that you know, as I’ve heard the opposition point out that there is still a high level of underemployment in the economy. In other words, there are persons who are in involved in economic activities that if they were to get a higher level of skill, they could probably find a higher paying economic engagement. The question is, how do we facilitate people moving from low-value engagement to higher-value engagement? And that is what HEART is tasked to do now.
This leads to the question of productivity, another area of our economic thought that we need to change. Jamaica is highly focused on inflation. Inflation is the big issue for Jamaicans because it impacts our cost of living. It’s what you see when you go to the supermarket, but the real variable is productivity, and if we were to increase our productivity, we would be able to mitigate inflation. And so a part of the investment in training and upskilling is about getting Jamaicans to be more productive, and many of you are business people, and you will immediately see what I’m saying.
If you were able to reduce the marginal cost of your production to reduce your average cost of production by virtue of increasing your output, the price at which you sell your goods would decrease. So, increasing productivity is a national objective now, and I want to say here with great clarity that this administration will be laser-focused on increasing the productivity of the Jamaican business environment.
Another area of ensuring that we have growth is on the ease of doing business and the cost of doing business. I know that that has been a challenge for business people. In my budget presentation, I had the pleasure of reminding everyone that it was the 8th consecutive budget we have presented with no new taxes and the 10th consecutive budget with no net new taxes whatsoever. This is unprecedented in Jamaica, and it has been a part of our concerted effort to create a predictable investment climate, but moreover, to ease the burden on individuals and businesses and to encourage economic activities.
We have done an amazing job in reducing taxes. We have increased the income tax threshold. When we came to office, the threshold was $592,800. It is now $1.7 million. Next month, it will be $1.8 million, and then after that, it will move to $2 million. We reduced GCT from 16.5% to 15%, but we did a big thing in this budget.
I don’t know how many of you remember this promise. A promise that wasn’t costed, a promise that said, when we win, we’re going to remove GCT off electricity. Who remembers that? Nobody costed it. It was a promise made, and the people facing high electricity bills say Oh God, thank you. But when it came to actually providing it, it couldn’t be done because the economy couldn’t support it. And I know a lot of people are disappointed, and I know a lot of people don’t like when I speak this way because it challenges their perspective and their confirmation bias, but we have to confront these things if we’re going to move forward in the next step and pivot. It’s a perfect example of a promise made without the economic wherewithal.
Well, before we made any commitments, we costed it, and so now I’m pleased to say that we can’t take off the GCT, but here’s what we can do. We’re cutting the GCT in half. More than that, we’re moving from 15% to 7% GCT on electricity. I know some people, but it is important that it be said that this government doesn’t make empty, fiscally irresponsible promises.
We reduced the transfer tax from 5% to 2%, and that has just created an explosion in the real estate market. We increase the pension relief and age relief from 80,000 per year to 250,000 per year, and in the next budget, that will go to 350,000. We have increased the turnover threshold required for registration to pay GCT from $3 million to $10 million, and we are now increasing that to a further $15 million. Every business person inside here who is at that level would be very happy.
We recognize that we must make government less burdensome for the people, and that’s why at every opportunity we get, once it is fiscally responsible to do so, we reduce taxes. Thus, as a part of the broader effort to modernize our public sector and to boost productivity, we have launched the streamlining processes for efficiency and economic development, otherwise called SPEED, not to be confused with DOGE.
Minister Audrey Marks, I’ve appointed a minister to actually focus on that, and her mandate is to undertake comprehensive review of Jamaica’s governance arrangement systems and processes, and to implement targeted reforms across the whole of government that will eliminate inefficiencies, reduce bureaucracy, and enhance the ease and speed of doing business. This strategic effort signifies our commitment to creating an environment in which businesses can flourish.
When Mr Black was doing this building here, he came upon some bureaucratic hurdles, and it’s not just Mr Black alone. I’m sure many of business people here come upon bureaucratic hurdles, particularly in permitting and approvals. Well, I’m here to tell you, and I’m glad I’m saying this when the mayor is here, our parish councils will be the first target of the SPEED Initiative. They are absolutely important to the local economy in how fast they facilitate business and investment, and we will ensure that our parish councils move in concert with business to ensure that businesses that are ready to invest are not inhibited and hampered.
The government has also taken a new measure to incentivize and support capital investments in the productive sector. We have announced accelerated capital allowances for investments in productive assets such as industrial and commercial buildings, plants and machinery, and IT equipment undertaken between the 1st of January 2025 to the 31st of December 2026.
Pay close attention to this one. These benefits are significant. For example, before the accelerated capital allowances were introduced, 28% of eligible expenditure incurred on concrete industrial buildings could be written off for tax purposes in the first two years with 4% per year thereafter. With this new accelerated allowance, 66% can be written off over the same two-year period and 5.5% per year thereafter. Essentially, what we are saying to the private sector is now is the time to retool and invest in your business. If you have investment plans on the table for three to five years down the road, we are saying to you, bring them forward, and the government will support your plans, and we are giving you a big incentive to do so. If you have investments, take advantage of the accelerated capital allowance.
We are also reducing the burdens on the MSEs. In the budget, we announced that we are increasing the annual turnover threshold for the mandatory GCT registration from $10 million to $15 million, so small businesses whose annual sales are below this threshold will no longer have the burden of filing GCT returns. If they find it beneficial to do so, for example, because their input tax exceeds their output tax and they wouldn’t be getting their refund, they will continue to have the option to register.
We have also announced that the Development Bank of Jamaica will have an option to include the upfront fees that borrowers have to pay into the loan amount so that they can be paid over time and are not immediate cash burdens on the business.
Now, I’m sure many businesses here would know that we had introduced a special arrears settlement programme to encourage taxpayers who have outstanding taxes to clear their principal balances by the 31st of March 2025 and take advantage of having their interest penalties and surcharges waived. Now, we have received many requests to have this extended.
E– is for economic diversification. I won’t go too much into that, but I wanted to spend a little time on infrastructure. I was looking back over the last decade, nine years since I’ve been Prime Minister, and I must say that the pace of infrastructure development could only be matched by the 60s. In fact, I believe that after we have started some of the projects that we have announced, the rate of infrastructure development would have surpassed the 1960s.
So, if you consider that in the 1960s, when we built out Downtown Kingston, for example, and we built out many of the roads that we had, but we haven’t been investing in maintenance from the 1960s onwards, because in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, our budget, our economy could not sustain a maintenance programme and so what we face in Jamaica today is a challenge of aging infrastructure.
Infrastructure that is just collapsing in front of you, whether it is sewer mains or potholes emerging in roads. We have aging infrastructure, and I’m sure there are many young people who look on at our towns and our urban spaces and wonder why our towns and urban spaces can’t look as modern as towns and urban spaces in the countries that you may have traveled to. I want to say to you that this administration has developed a plan, and we have been activating that plan to improve our towns and urban spaces. If you get a chance, drive out to the Morant Bay Urban Centre and you will see the vision of modern urban spaces coming to a reality.
We have introduced new economic incentives for urban renewal. You will hear more about that, but a programme that is near and dear to me is the building out of park and recreational spaces for our people. Yes, we have done this, and I give credit; I’m not averse to giving credit. I give credit to PJ Patterson when he had the vision for Emancipation Park. Yes, and under my administration, in Montego Bay, we have built the Harmony Park.
And in the 15th Parish of Portmore to be, in a few months, we will open the Resilient Park. And I had announced in Parliament that in this parish, the NHT will undertake the construction of a similar parish park for Manchester, but it will be in the curtilage of Mandeville. We’re looking at Brooks Park, but if the Chamber of Commerce or any other stakeholders have any other idea, it’s still in the embryonic stage, so now is the time to make your views known. And what we have decided to do is that for all our parks, we will name them symbolically to honour what I call national ethos. So Emancipation, something important in our history, Harmony, an important ethos, Resilience, an important ethos. I wonder what we should call the park in Manvdeille. What about industry, innovation, solidarity, all kinds of names that could reflect something of our national ethos. I wanted to make this announcement here that Mandeville will have its parish park that will be equal to or better than the ones that we have built before.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve spent a long time here going through in details because this year is a special year. It is a year of decision, and we don’t want any mistakes, so we have to go through in detail the plan. We have to go through in detail the issues so that everyone in this room is seized of the mission. You have the information, even if it is not consonant with your perspective, but at least I would have paid the respect of giving you my side of the facts, and all I can do is ask that you choose wisely, that you choose Jamaica.
God bless you and thank you.