PIOJ Growth-Inducement Strategy - Planning Institute of Jamaica

7.0 Fundamental Steps Forward for Jamaica
Jamaica must grow! Rurally, agriculturally, and economically. The evidence is
overwhelming that sustainable growth and transformation cannot be achieved without
improved logistics. Logistics drive efficiencies in agriculture and bring rural
communities within easy reach of domestic and export markets creating wealth
particularly in the social strata closest to the poverty line. The improvement of rural roads
is broadly recognized as a fundamental precondition for the development of rural areas.
Remoteness and lack of mobility are widely identified by the poor as factors which
heighten their vulnerability and perpetuate their poverty (Hettige, 2006).
The upgrade, rehabilitation, and maintenance of the network of logistics infrastructure
hold possibilities for community action. We can revive community participation in road
maintenance not only at maintaining verges as is now done via the IDB-financed Road
Improvement Program but increasingly on the travelled carriageway. This road
improvement together with general environment upgrading to accommodate community
tourism will require capacity building and skills training to enable proper and technically
sound work by community agents. This is a job for the JSIF!
Similarly, support from agencies like JSIF can provide communities with the tools and
training in logistics to improve harvesting techniques which increase the shelf life and
reduce the farm to markets losses of produce and create a network of modern storage and
warehousing activity either through private investment or, where margins are low, on a
community basis.
This support can also encompass the third element of effective logistics - the adequate
communication infrastructure to receive orders, deliver product, and process deliveries in
a timely manner. This intelligent information system together with good physical road
transport could result in smaller, fresher, micro-loads that have higher quality driven by
consumer demand or pull factors rather than production constraints or push factors.
(Bosona, 2011)
Improved distribution systems supported by the current broadband IT infrastructure can
support the redirection of energies of the many road-side vendors who can perhaps be
more productively employed in packaging houses, quality control, or as agricultural
workers with increased income as a result of high productivity, less waste and product
losses due to transit and deterioration.
The challenge going forward therefore is to re-engineer our view of transport and
communication networks to construct, not necessarily roads and highways, but logistic
networks that will address the slide in labour productivity. Through the measures outlined
here, JSIF can play its part in harnessing Jamaica’s own resources and capabilities in a
synergistic manner to increase its competitiveness and growth prospects. This will in
turn give its citizens better value for money and position Jamaica to be a serious exporter
of value-added tourism and agro production and, as well, “the place of choice to live,
work, raise families and do business”.
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