Doing Business in Jamaica

• Author: Lloyd G. Waller/Densil A. Williams/Omar E. Hawthorne/Donavon Johnson
• Profession: Head of the Department of Government at The University of the West Indies, Mona. His research focuses on research methodologies; governance and public policy; and digital transformation/Professor of International Business at the UWI/Lecturer of International Relations and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Leadership and Governance at ...
• Pages: 38-53

Introduction

Since 2009, Jamaica’s international ranking/placement on Doing Business

business in Jamaica became more tedious and unfriendly from 2009

to 2013 when doing business in the island reached an all-time low in

the 2008–18 decade according to the World Bank statistics. In 2009, the

Doing Business score in Jamaica took a drastic dip and only spiralled

downwards from there onward to 2013. Dire economic conditions as well

as an upsurge in violence, particularly the 2010 Tivoli Gardens incursion,

facilitated nationwide conditions that were unfavourable to doing business

in the island. The year 2014, however, represented a watershed moment

for doing business in Jamaica as the island’s doing business prole took a

steep step of improvement by moving from 94 to 71 on the World Bank’s

Doing Business index (DBI).

Figure 4.1: Trading Economics Doing Business Rank of Jamaica from

2008–16

4. Doing Business in Jamaica

39

Doing Business in Jamaica

Understanding the DBI in Context of

Its Critiqued Weaknesses

Some scholars and technocrats articulate that Jamaica’s fall on the Doing Business

index as a result of the change in the DBI methodology and that this shift in the

accurately describe doing business in some countries, particularly Jamaica. Then

Doing Business report is not the best indication of

how doing business really is in Jamaica, and that the World Economic Forum (WEF)

issues it seeks to address with stakeholders as part of its mission to improve the

state of the world… Moreover, it is based on infrastructure that is already in place

and what even the most vulnerable in society is feeling on the ground, while the

Doing Business Report focuses more on infrastructure, legislations and policies

passed by the Government (para. 2).

more relevant to us as business people than the Doing Business report. The politicians

of course have been emphasising the Doing Business report because there has been

When you look at Jamaica’s situation, we improved seven places over the 2015

to 2016 period in the Doing Business Report — but effectively because of the

number of rms participating in the report over the period, we have slipped about

because it shows what we have been talking about: that putting something in

place is not enough, we have to have implementation (Bennett 2015, para. 6).

business in Jamaica primarily because of the focus of the DBI versus the focus of

of a commercial court to efciently deal with issues of insolvency, and the general

lack of enforcement of what is there and implementation rather than ‘talking’ about

also assess the effective implementation and enforcing of these institutions.