Prime Minister Bruce Golding (left) in conversation with Marjory Kennedy (centre), president of the Jamaica Exporters Association, and Omar Azan, president of the Jamaica Manufacturers Association, at the launch of the National Export Strategy at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston yesterday. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Likening Jamaica to a stall, Prime Minister Bruce Golding is urging the country to prepare itself to compete more effectively on the world market.

"The world is one huge marketplace and we have been assigned in that marketplace a little stall, and the world has said to us 'that is your stall, go and work your stall' and whether or not that remains a stall or becomes a massive supermarket is not the world's responsibility, but ours."

Golding, who was speaking yesterday at the launch of the National Export Strategy at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston, said the world market had changed extensively in the last 15 years, and Jamaica had failed to keep up with the market. He however encouraged Jamaica to understand the dynamics of the market and to act on what they have learnt in making Jamaica competitive.

Face some challenges

"We have faced some challenges yes, but in that marketplace, as vicious as it appears to be at times, at least we can go in there and grab a little something for ourselves, but we have to search it out because it is a vast market."

The National Export Strategy seeks to improve trade performance through a national and comprehensive approach that addresses the sector and cross-sector trade matters. Through the strategy, the export community should benefit from an improved trade environment, improved information and relationships arising from the sector approach.

The strategy is a collaboration between the Ministry of Industry Investment and Commerce, Jamaica Trade and Invest, Jamaica Exporters Association, the Private Sector Development Programme and the International Trade Centre. Golding welcomed the strategy and said collaboration between public and private players in the sector will ensure that it is a success.

Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce Karl Samuda was also supportive of the new move, saying Jamaica should seek to achieve efficiency in trade.

"It is a question of identifying those items that we are now exporting, what are the impediments to the expansion of their present volume of exports, what are the bureaucratic humbugs, what are the causes of delays and frustrations and the expansion of that list of products," he said.