Job losses arising from the COVID-19 fallout are worse than the previous crisis in 2008, but recovery should happen four times as fast, according to Planning Institute of Jamaica, PIOJ, Director General Dr Wayne Henry. That’s due to the improved...
Facing a new paradigm of smaller offices and staff working remotely from home, the inevitable implication of which is reduced demand for office furniture, Stationery and Office Supplies Limited, SOS, has started offering home office furniture to...
The number of car crashes have fallen since the April imposition of COVID-19 curfews, but the damage sustained in motor accidents were found to be more severe. The upshot for IronRock is that claims are tracking apace with last year, despite fewer...
Over the three years in which David Noel has led Scotia Group Jamaica as president and CEO, he has grown loans by more than a third, keeping pace with the market, but the bank has been outmatched by its chief rival in terms of profits and asset...
The market value of Barita Investments Limited, BIL, has hit $100 billion for the first time, a status held by only three other stocks, all of which are financial firms. However the stock pared gains the following day. BIL closed at $92.20 on...
About half of households surveyed in Jamaica have registered a job loss since the pandemic, according to findings of an Inter-American Development Bank, IDB, survey. Contrastingly, upper-income households registered job losses at half the rate, or...
In a show of confidence, financial conglomerate JMMB Group said it intends to grow through acquisitions and would resume paying dividends to shareholders. The M...
Mayberry Investments Limited CEO Gary Peart now presides as executive chairman over large gaming group Supreme Ventures Limited, SVL, but Mayberry’s chairman and SVL director Christopher Berry says it was never their intent to take an active role...
Unserviced bank and mortgage loans grew by one-third to $27.9 billion over the span of a year ending June, according to new central bank data. It’s the highest percentage rise in eight years and, as a dollar value, grew by $7.5 billion from $20.4...
Rainforest Seafoods will start installing a 1.5-megawatt natural gas power plant in Kingston next week, taking another step towards energy independence. The company will set up three 500-kilowatt turbines that will feed on natural gas. The plant...
The Jamaica Stock Exchange’s Main Index, when mapped on a chart, shows the formation of the largest bearish pattern in 25 years. The formation, which takes the classic head-and-shoulder shape of a market in transition, shows Jamaican stocks...
Jamaica Energy Partners, JEP, an operator of power plants and producer of electricity, is considering entering the electric vehicle charging market. “Our group, having started the listed operations in the Dominican Republic, entry into Panama and...
Caribbean Cement Company Limited may resume cement exports to the region, but says if it does, it won’t be at the expense of the Jamaican market. The cement producer supplies the bulk of the local market from its production facility at Rockfort in...
Productive Business Solutions, PBS, which sells printers, scanners and security devices, continues to shift towards technology services, with contracts from a major American retailer to add internet connectivity to supermarkets in five countries...
Some 50,000 customers took up Scotia Group Jamaica’s waiver of interest on some loans and credit cards during the May-July quarter. Within that period, the No. 2 banking group made net profit of $1.5 billion, but that was just over a third of what...
Sagicor Group Jamaica plans to do a real estate development in Spanish Town, St Catherine, says President and CEO Christopher Zacca. It follows acquisition of a majority stake in start-up real estate venture Bailey-Williams Limited, last year. “It...
Investors tend to trade stocks lower during the month of general election, but not so this time around. There was a rise in the JSE Combined Index both on the day of polls and the day after, albeit marginal movements that amounted to less than a...
The Jamaica Stock Exchange, JSE, eked out trading gains on election day within the wider context of the stock market and real economy in decline, due to the contractionary effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It came amid news from the JSE after...
Blue Mountain Bicycle Tours is investing millions to expand its zipline attraction at Cedar Valley despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which could further delay the opening of the ride. The project involves setting up a second zipline, which would...
Workers planning to retire this year with a pension might want to reconsider and wait for a year or two, before they start pulling down on their retirement benefits, pension experts say. The advice stems from the decline in the value of pension...
New Fortress Energy, NFE, doubled its revenues in the June quarter to US$76 million, strengthened in part by earnings from its power facility at Jamalco which came on stream in March. In newly released financials, New Fortress reported that US$45...
Jamaican stock market investors are trading more online, with volumes already surpassing the levels seen in all of 2019, due in part to lockdown measures against the coronavirus. It shows that while slow, there is incremental transition to online...
In keeping with demand, medical masks, hand sanitisers and detergents aimed at fighting the spread of the coronavirus, dominate supplies in warehouses operated by Medical Disposables...
The Jamaican economy lost $4.5 billion of real value in the March quarter, numbers that capture just the first three weeks of virus-containment measures that were cited as the cause of the decline. Economic output, measured as gross domestic...
