Jamaicans urged to think outside the box
Published:Thursday | August 12, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter
Jamaicans are being encouraged to concentrate on developing products which could give them an advantage over rivals elsewhere in the world.
Milton Samuda, president of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC), yesterday encouraged investors to consider pumping their money and energy into areas such as health tourism, noting that the island is ideally placed to take advantage of potential benefits.
"People speak about agri-processing and that is fairly obvious because you have the niches and you have the raw material," Samuda said during a Gleaner Editors' forum, held in collaboration with the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica at the newspaper's North Street, central Kingston, offices.
"But that aside, health tourism, for example, because you are so close to one of the largest markets for health services which, at the same time, is one of the most expensive and we have not tapped into the exploitation of it," Samuda said.
Last year, international accounting and consulting firm, Deloitte, estimated that 1.6 million American patients would travel to other countries in 2010 for medical care and treatment.
According to the firm, the movement of those patients would double the number of persons who travelled for similar services in 2007, giving credence to the claim that health tourism is a developing market that is waiting to be tapped into.
The industry is estimated to generate around US$20 billion per year.
Samuda lamented that, though people were willing to pay good money for the service, Jamaica has not seen the possibilities.
"People go past us to other jurisdictions and pay fabulously. The industry has got to the stage where you tie the bed in the hotel room to the bed in the hospital. We have spoken about it for years because it is an opportunity that pre-existed our present dilemma," Samuda said.
India, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, South Africa and Cuba are the leading countries in the market.
According to Samuda, the changing business environment brought on by the economic recession, has created an opportunity for Jamaicans to move into many of these areas that are not fully exploited.
Time to reassess
"We have an opportunity to reassess how we do what we do. Banks are going to be forced to go back and businesses are going to be forced to look at more than margins because you have to look at being competitive, not only with the guy down the road but the persons within the region and outside the region who might be doing what it is that you are doing," Samuda said.
Meanwhile, Nicholas Scott, chair of the PSOJ economic policy committee, said if Jamaica was to unlock its economic potential the issue of financing, which is critical to entrepreneurship, must be fully addressed.
"We have not seen interest rates come down and spreads narrow at a rapid rate," Scott said, while arguing that there are systemic problems in the banking sector which now curtail their ability to onlend to entrepreneurial projects at favourable rates.