Government Tables National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority Bill
Prime Minister Positions NaRRA as Central Mechanism for Recovery, Delivery and Economic Resurgence
Prime Minister Dr. the Most Honourable Andrew Holness today tabled an updated version of the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) Bill in Parliament, describing the legislation as one of the most consequential pieces of legislation Parliament has been asked to consider in the modern era of Jamaica’s development. He positioned the post-Melissa moment as a rare, time-limited opportunity to convert national vision into national delivery.
“We are not restoring a pre-Melissa Jamaica. We are building a post-Melissa Jamaica that the generations before us dreamed of and the generations after us will inherit.”
The Prime Minister noted that the IMF, World Bank Group, Inter-American Development Bank, CAF, and the Caribbean Development Bank have jointly committed a coordinated financing package of up to US$6.7 billion, the single largest development financing package ever assembled for Jamaica, and that the institutions have commended the Government’s decision to establish NaRRA, noting that few countries act so quickly to set up a modern, best-practice central coordinating body.
However, Prime Minister Holness was direct about the financing gap. With assessed damage from Hurricane Melissa at US$12.2 billion, the US$6.7 billion multilateral package leaves a significant shortfall that public borrowing alone cannot close.
“Private capital, both domestic and international, must be mobilized, crowded in, and put to work alongside public investment.”
The Prime Minister outlined that NaRRA is built on two distinct and mutually reinforcing pillars, incorporating both public and private investment.
1. Approved Reconstruction and Resilience Projects are Government-led projects that NaRRA will coordinate, implement, or oversee directly, delivered by Government or through public-private partnerships. NaRRA will act as a single point of national coordination, eliminating the fragmentation, duplication, and inter-agency delay that have too often slowed project delivery.
Projects under this pillar include the rebuilding of roads, bridges, drainage systems, schools, and health facilities; the climate-resilient reconstruction and relocation of communities from high-risk zones; the transformation of Black River and Falmouth into planned, climate-ready urban cores; the construction of a new Kingston Public Hospital; the Government Campus at National Heroes Circle; and major infrastructure including the Vernamfield aerodrome and near-port logistics expansion at the Port of Kingston. A public register of all approved projects will be maintained with performance indicators and compliance systems.
2. Designated Strategic Investment Projects under FAST Jamaica (the Facilitated Acceleration of Strategic Transformation) creates a dedicated pathway to fast-track private sector-led strategic investment. For these projects, NaRRA’s role is not delivery but expedition: coordinating across agencies and accelerating regulatory approvals.
The Prime Minister announced that the FAST Jamaica investment threshold will be lowered from US$150 million to US$15 million, widening participation to a broader universe of domestic, diaspora, regional, and international investors.
“Imagine one hundred projects at that threshold. That is US$1.5 billion of private investment, mobilized at speed, creating jobs, building capacity, and driving economic expansion across every region of this island.”
Addressing the governance debate, the Prime Minister drew on Jamaica’s own public administration tradition. While NaRRA is not an Executive Agency, its governance structure with a CEO reporting directly to the responsible Minister, draws from elements of the structure that has underpinned Jamaica’s Executive Agencies since the 1990s.
The Prime Minister cited a 2001 address of then Cabinet Secretary Dr. Carlton Davis, who documented why the Executive Agency model had been developed to address the issue of accountability “diffused between Minister, Chairman, Board and Chief Executive”.
To reinforce transparency and public accountability, the Prime Minister announced that oversight of NaRRA will be provided by the Jamaica Reconstruction and Resilience Oversight Committee (JAMRROC). This independent body will monitor performance and report publicly on performance and outcomes.
He noted that JAMRROC will be structured along the lines of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC) model, widely regarded as a successful accountability mechanism in Jamaica’s economic reform programme.
“Reconstruction is not a government project. It is a national project. Its oversight must reflect that. That is why I am announcing today that the Government will make provision for JAMRROC to include a member nominated by the Leader of the Opposition.”
Prime Minister Holness confirmed that the Minister of Finance will issue an Order under section 3(3) of the Public Procurement Act, 2015, exempting NaRRA from the standard procurement regime and specifying the terms and conditions that will apply providing operational speed and flexibility while keeping the framework legally grounded and maintaining prudence and accountability.
Responding directly to concerns raised by the Incorporated Masterbuilders Association of Jamaica, the Prime Minister was unequivocal:
“Local contractors, local workers, and local businesses are not peripheral to this reconstruction effort; they are central to it. Under NaRRA, reconstruction will strengthen Jamaican capacity, not sideline or bypass it.”
In closing, the Prime Minister called on Members of Parliament to engage the Bill with the seriousness and scrutiny that it deserves but to do so with focus and urgency.
“I ask that we resist the temptation to allow the theoretical to overwhelm the practical, to become so absorbed in debating institutional design that we forget the people of St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover, and the other parishes who are waiting for their communities to be rebuilt. Jamaica does not need a recovery model in which process supersedes tangible outcomes, in which files move elegantly while reconstruction stalls. The people of Jamaica are not waiting for a perfect institution. They are waiting for a functioning one. They are waiting for schools their children can learn in, hospitals where their families can be treated, roads they can drive on, and homes they can live in safely. NaRRA is how we deliver those things faster, more transparently, and with greater accountability than Jamaica has ever managed before.”