Jamaica’s FDI flows continue to recover
Published:Wednesday | July 10, 2024 | 8:34 AMSteven Jackson/Senior Business Reporter
Flows of foreign direct investment into Jamaica, especially in the areas of tourism, and outsourcing and information technology, have grown to their highest level since the pandemic, when the flows were decimated amid a lockdown of economies around the world.
“That makes sense,” said Delano Seiveright, senior adviser and strategist in the Ministry of Tourism, regarding the new data.
Jamaica earned US$431 million in FDI in 2023, which was one-third better that the US$319 million of investment flows recorded the previous year, according to the World Investment Report 2024 published by the United Nations.
However, FDI flows still trail the pre-pandemic average of US$600 million a year.
Seiveright said growth in foreign investment flows would likely continue due to mega tourism projects in the pipeline. A big one relates to the 2025 opening of Jamaica’s first casino resort by Princess Hotel, which will eventually have 2,000 hotel rooms. The quantum of the investment in the casino resort is undisclosed, but it requires a minimum investment of US$500 million to qualify for a casino licence. It forms part of the Government’s plan to grow the hotel room count from 32,000 to 50,000 in five years.
The UN’s FDI figures differ from the 2023 estimates published by the central bank, Bank of Jamaica, which estimated last year’s FDIs at US$376.5 million. A revision might happen later in the year as, previously, annual data from both sources, BOJ and the UN, have matched seamlessly. Regardless of the source, FDIs are at pandemic highs.
The bulk of the flows last year related to tourism projects, US$180 million; while outsourcing and IT accounted for US$140.5 million, according to BOJ data. An additional US$55 million was categorised as retained earnings.
It was the third-highest FDIs for the outsourcing-IT sector, after 2007 (US$165 million) and 2008 (US$257 million); and the sixth-highest flows for the tourism sector, which hit a record of US$368 million in 2015.
FDIs in Jamaica totalled US$265 million in 2020. Of that amount, tourism flows accounted for about one-tenth or US$27 million, as the pandemic reset business activity.
In 2008, Jamaica attracted US$1.4 billion in FDIs, the highest since 1998 when the estimates of FDIs first began. In the subsequent year, 2009, FDIs dropped to US$540 million, and then to about half of that in 2010, at US$227 million. It reflected the impact of the global financial crisis.
The UN report lauded Jamaica, along with other nations, for developing an investment recovery plan in 2020, but did not speak on Jamaica’s performance directly. Such commentary comes in the FDI report from ECLAC, the regional UN body. That report usually gets published by August.