Jamaica's Image Bad for Business BRAND Jamaica is awesome, but our business image has some serjous catching up to do. To inany people the world over, most Jamaicans smoke ganja, wear dreadlocks and listen to teggae music all day. Jamaica for them readily conjures up the image of Bob Marley-the Third World's biggest music star-and Usain Bolt, the world's fastest runner. So strong is that image that Jamaicans are not generally seen as hardworking, innovative people. The vast majority do not think of Jamaica as a place to do business. This makes it mote difficult to attract foreign investment. This image problem is not new. When the hopelessly lost Christopher Columbus stumbled on Jamaica he thanked God and inquired earnestly about gold. Finding bone, he took anything of value and departed in queat of El Dorado. The Spanish did not see Jamaica as a place to do business. When the English eaptured the island, they did not initially think of production. Instead, they operated the first logisties hub and free zone in Port Royal, the so-called 'wickedest city in the world' with its transient population of pirates. Later, they saw an opportunity to do the business of sugar cultivation using Irish overseers and African slave laboar. Jamaica was not a place to do business but, rather one to get rich quick, export the profits to London and import everything, including basic foods from the American colonies. When stgar, banana and bauxite production were in their haleyon days, the owners were usunlly British, Canadian or American and the profits either acerued abroad or were repatriated overseas. These companies never re-iavested their profits in Jamaica, In addition, many Jamaicans in business did not see their owa homeland as a place with long-term oconomic prospects because of crime, bad governance and devaluation. Instead they sent and continue to send their profits to banis in Miami, Cayman and London. This outflow might be as large as the remittances from Jamnicans abroad Even if a potential foreign investor is smart enough to understand that not all Jamaicans are fast-tunning- reggaesinging, ganja-sinoking Rastas, they often do not think of Jamaica as a place for serious busines. Many buy into the allepervasive toarism advertisement of an island paradise where people do not work bat rather spend their days drinking ram while lying under a coconut tree on a white sand beach gently caressed by the warm azare Caribbean Sea. This is a great winning image for the promotion of tourism but not for peomoting Jamaica as a place to do bueiness. Jamaica has to compete for business and investment with other countries which have a positive business image. The Germans, for eximple, are seen as disciplined; the Japanese as elever, the Americans as promoters of private enterprise, the Swiss as disereet money managers, the Singaporeans as precise and clever and the Chinese as the most efticient manufacturers. If Jamaica is to be seen by the world as a place to do business then we will have to promote a different image, without losing the brand of paradise on earth. We have to remisd people that famaica has a tradition of excellence not only in botels and beaches bat also produces the best rum, coftee and jerk food, the best workers who did everything from building the Panama Canal to ruaning the Landon transpart system; we have a stable democracy, a free press and the rule of law and a strategic location in the centre of the Western hemisphere. d. Clearly explain how you will evaluate this campaign. (10 marks)
