Chamber boss wants all hands on deck in making MoBay top business hub

President of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry Janet Silvera says an all-hands-on-deck approach is needed for Montego Bay to become the number one tourism and business hub in the Caribbean.

Arguing that there is very little room for “fence-sitters and armchair quarterbacks”, Silvera said too much was at stake to allow the whims and fancies of the lawless to undermine “the gains we have worked so hard to achieve”.

Addressing business interests and stakeholders at a Sandals Resorts International-sponsored cocktail reception to promote MoBay Expo 2020 at the Appliance Traders Automotive (ATL) facility in Montego Bay, St James, last week, Silvera added that her organisation stands ready to discuss whatever it takes to restore the city to its lofty heights and to create a business environment that is investor-friendly and free of fear.

TOURISM CAPITAL

“The city of Montego Bay continues to be an anchor for Jamaica’s economic development and is now widely considered as the tourism capital of the Caribbean,” Silvera, who is also a journalist with The Gleaner Company (Media) Ltd, said.

“Despite some obvious shortfalls, the city has grown in stature and currently stands as the fastest developing city in the Caribbean. We have seen over the past 30 years the high level of infrastructural development, the growing world-renowned business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, the establishment of several university campuses, and investments by major hotel chains, as well as other major happenings, including a first-class and First-World convention centre.”

Silvera said that with so much in hand, it was incumbent on stakeholders to do everything in their power to sustain momentum and to ensure that the positive gains continue to take precedence over “negativity”.

“As head of the Chamber, we want stakeholders to be a part of initiatives such as the MoBay Expo that will ensure that Montego Bay becomes that business centre of the region,” she further said.

Silvera added that it was “the love for the city that will tell us that we cannot vend where you want to vend … it is the love that is going to let us say we cannot throw your garbage at the most convenient place. We have to do right for the city that we dearly love”.

The event is not only the largest of its kind in western Jamaica, but comes at a time, according to Silvera, when “we here in the West are determined to show the rest of the country, and, by extension, the entire Caribbean region, that hardly anything of significance can happen without taking our views, assets, and potential into consideration.”