Prime Minister Bruce Golding says if Jamaica is to keep pace with the competition globally, the productivity level of the Jamaican labour force will have to be improved.

Addressing the 27th conference of the Human Resources Management Association of Jamaica on Saturday, Golding said he has already approached the Planning Institute of Jamaica to provide an annual index on the productivity level of the labour force to determine whether it is getting better, holding its own or is slipping away.

The conference was held at the Sunset Jamaica Grande hotel in Ocho Rios.

The Prime Minister said Jamaica was part of a world where "the rules of the game have shifted, the goals are bigger and, therefore, everybody was falling into line in pursuit of economic growth and activity".

He said human capital cannot be excluded from the productivity process.

"In this borderless world in which we live, we are facing a level of competition that we have never faced before. Investors looking for a destination to place their investment no longer have a narrow list from which to choose. The competition is not just how we face foreign investment but how we hold on to our own market to maintain a share for ourselves," he said.

The Prime Minister said in order to compete, efficiency and productivity were the critical determining factors.

"We have to be that much better, more attractive. We are dealing with competition from all over the world and we have to look for that advantage," Golding said.

Human productivity

The Prime Minister said there are some elements of the country's production that are fixed, such as energy, and thus Jamaica was competing against countries paying less for energy and could not gain that competitive advantage.

In light of this, he said, the country would need to look at human productivity. The Prime Minister said Jamaica does not have a shortage of labour and so the Government was going out for those kinds of investment that create as many jobs as possible.

He said this would have to be done because it is the only way that Jamaica will be able to absorb some of the excess labour and to be able to tackle some of the social problems of crime and violence.

'We have to be that much better, more attractive. We are dealing with competition from all over the world and we have to look for that advantage.'