Doing Business in Jamaica: The Starting a Business Environment

• 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: 68-80

Introduction

In this chapter, we will explore the experiences of non-Jamaican businesses

business owners’ experiences in setting up a business in Jamaica are mixed

but predominantly bad. The data showed that while business owners/

operators laud the ease in registering a business, they abhorred the slow and

sluggish operation of the government departments/ofces, as well as the red

tape and bureaucratic problems involved in the process. They also indicated

that setting up a business in Jamaica is costly and that this expense is one of

the challenges they faced.

Starting a Business

Doing Business report (DBR), Jamaica is ranked fth in

(DTF) score of 97.3, thereby missing a perfect score by only 2.7 points. This

indicates that according to the DBR’s comparative analysis/ranking, starting a

business in Jamaica is relatively easy.

When business owners were asked about their experiences in setting up a

business in Jamaica, the responses were mixed. While some owners did not

problematize the process, others viewed it as ‘predominantly challenging’.

The articulations of one business owner, in particular, sums up the overall

perspectives, saying ‘the process is easy but very slow.’ Figure 6.2 represents

a network diagram that highlights the themes that emerged from the data

collected.

The ndings of this study are, in some cases, different from the ndings of

terms of the country’s rank in starting a business. World Bank (2016) indicated

that in 2016 Jamaica moved up eight places (from 2015) on the doing business

rank for ‘starting a business’, indicating that the procedures, time, and costs

associated with starting a business had all decreased. By 2018, Jamaica

6. Doing Business in Jamaica: The

Starting a Business Environment