Speeches by the Prime Minister

Keynote Address By Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP Prime Minister of Jamaica  at the 2025 National Security Seminar On February 6, 2025 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We're too late in the year for me to wish you a happy new year, but I wish you, nonetheless.  And I thank our moderator and those who have spoken before me for greeting everyone. This is the third year that I've had the privilege of delivering this keynote at this important seminar and I commend the Office of the National Security Advisor for consistently bringing together the minds working on what is arguably the most pressing national issue.  The theme of this seminar, "Security Without Borders: Aligning Local, Regional, and International Efforts to Build a Resilient Future", encapsulates the fundamental reality that the major security threats we face are not confined to national borders. They are transnational, requiring cooperative and often coordinated solutions that transcend borders, ideologies, and institutional silos. Jamaica, like many of our Caribbean neighbours, faces the acute threat posed by organized crime, which is responsible for the extraordinarily high murder rate with which we have lived for decades. This problem was initially made worse and has been amplified by…

Keynote Address By Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP Prime Minister of Jamaica At the Jamaica Union Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists Religious Liberty Summit On January 30, 2025 _______________________________________  Protocols have been well established, but allow me to acknowledge the leader of the opposition, our cabinet secretary, ministers, members of parliament, senators who are here, Dr Adlai Blythe, Treasurer of the Jamaica Union of Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Bishop Michael Smith, Chairman of the Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches, specially invited  Pastor Nelu Burcea from as far as Romania; welcome,  Associate Director of Religious Liberty  Department Adventist World Church,  members of the media, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, all. Allow me to repeat my earlier wish for you, a happy, peaceful, prosperous, productive and victorious 2025. Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to join you at this important gathering dedicated to advancing religious liberty in Jamaica. I extend my warmest greetings to the leadership and membership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, as well as to representatives from other faith communities, trade unions, businesses and civil society. It is indeed an honour to address you on this significant occasion as we observe the theme "Fostering Unity: Respecting…

Greetings By Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP Prime Minister of Jamaica At Heal the Family, Heal the Nation On January 8, 2025 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you, Custos Pitkin. Let me acknowledge my colleagues in the Cabinet, Minister Chuck and Samuda, MP Robert Miller, Mayor Swaby. And allow me to return the wish of blessing to the leader of the opposition and to my good friends Bishop Delford Davis and his wife for putting on and organizing this event. I was reflecting that I've been to possibly more than 10 of these events. It's been a little while and it is always, for me, the best way to start the new year. Allow me to acknowledge Reverend Courtney Gordon, Chairman of the Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches and other leaders of the faith community, locally and internationally, who are attending this event and to you, the important people in the room, the people who make it happen. As we assemble for the 5th gathering of the National Day of Prayer, we also mark the 19th year of the Heal the Family, Heal the Nation service; this is our fixture on the annual calendar. And as I said, I've…

As we welcome 2025 with all the new opportunities and possibilities it promises, we give God thanks for sparing our lives to see yet another year and we spare a thought for those who left us in 2024. 2024 tested our resilience, but it also revealed our strength. We faced challenges with courage and celebrated achievements with pride. Category 4 Hurricane Beryl badly damaged southern parishes, however we staged the fastest and most comprehensive recovery from a weather event of that magnitude in Jamaica’s history. Within weeks of the disaster your government was able to conduct assessments rapidly and distribute recovery grants of significant amounts. To date just under 14,000 cheques have been delivered to beneficiaries. There is no question that this administration has had to deal with some of the greatest crises and shocks to have impacted the country in the last 100 years. Pandemic, Global Inflation and Supply Chain Crisis, Climate Change generated crises and associated Hurricanes, Tropical Storms, Flooding and Drought. Any truthful observer must admit that we have handled these crises comparatively better than previous governments and on par if not better than governments of peer countries regionally and even globally.  We can be certain that…

Keynote Address By Dr. The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP Prime Minister of Jamaica At the Morant Bay Urban Centre Stakeholders Engagement On November 13, 2024 _______________________________________   Thank you very much, Madam Director of Protocol and Master of the Ceremonies. First of all, let me thank all of you for coming out. The weather threatened to derail this event, but God has other plans and he understands the objective of what we are trying to achieve. Let me thank the Minister's fraternal who prayed for us an earnest prayer for our safety, but also for our welfare and well-being. These are not ordinary times. We are living in a time of great change. Globally, you see wars and rumours of wars. You see great human suffering all over but it is also a time of great opportunities; the rapid change in technology, the growth of nations and economies but we also see the changing climate. We are having hurricanes and tropical storms when in our lifetimes, we never experienced them with so much intensity and frequency and so for little Jamaica, we can't just say that things will happen to us and we can't do anything about…

Keynote Address By Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP Prime Minister of Jamaica At the Olympic Way Community Cultural Centre Site Handover & Groundbreaking On November 4, 2024 ________________________________________   Firstly, let me acknowledge that the protocols have been established and the protocol officers here have explained to all the participants that they need not repeat the protocols.  I start here because Jamaica is a country of ceremony. We stand on ceremony. Nothing is wrong with that, ceremonies are important. It is important that we have an exercise to inform the community of what we are doing. It is more than just sending out a memo, an email, a text message. It's about gathering the people together and giving an explanation so it is the marking of a milestone by bringing people together, but we shouldn't spend too much time in ceremony. If you were to check up the number of hours that ministers spend seated in ceremony, you wonder where they get time to actually do work so I've actually given a directive to the Cabinet Secretary that we must review our protocols for ceremony to ensure that our productive people are not spending too much…

Statement on the 5 Murders in Waltham Park By Dr The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP Prime Minister of Jamaica On November 26, 2024 ________________________________________ First, let me join with both the commissioner and the minister in extending my deep and sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of those who were brutally killed in this multiple-victim violent incident. We are very disturbed by this but I invite Jamaica and the press who are here with us to recall that a few weeks ago we had a press conference at the Office of the Prime Minister to discuss what we saw as an emerging trend in violence and in particular homicides in Jamaica. This is as a result we theorize from our very effective approach in neutralizing, eradicating and in many respects disbanding gangs in Jamaica. We have moved from over 300 documented gangs to now just under 180 and we continue to degrade and eradicate them so we take careful note of the change in the nature of homicides in Jamaica. And though it is not yet the majority of homicides where the homicides are committed in what we are describing as multiple-victim violent incidents rather…

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, fellow Jamaicans: I am filled with excitement and optimism today as I announce a significant transition in our national economic policy. Today, we turn the page to a new chapter in Jamaica’s economic journey—a chapter of opportunity, and the potential to create a brighter future for every Jamaican. The Journey from Economic Crisis to Stability To appreciate this moment, we must first reflect on where we have come from. In 2013, Jamaica was at the very edge of an economic precipice. We faced unsustainable debt levels, massive unemployment, and the spectre of bankruptcy as a country. But out of that crisis, we found a common resolve to take control of our destiny, we rallied around a national consensus, focused on fiscal prudence, debt reduction, and macroeconomic stability. Through disciplined financial management, sound policies, and the sacrifices of our people, Jamaica has achieved an extraordinary turnaround: We have halved our debt from over 146% of GDP to under 70%. We have reduced the unemployment rate from 15% to a record low of 4.2% We have increased our Net International Reserves from US$0.9 billion to a record high of US$5.7 billion Our external credit rating as measured…