Use Opportunity To Explore New Business Avenues

Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Audrey Marks, has charged the membership of the American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica (AmCham) to seize the window of opportunity to utilise the resources of the Jamaican Embassy in Washington, DC, and join with other entrepreneurs and their counterparts in America in exploring new opportunities for business.

Marks was addressing last Friday’s AmCham breakfast forum in celebration of its 25th anniversary at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston on the topic, ‘The Business of Diplomacy’.

She made the call against the background that unlike the years immediately following the post-Cold War era when the world’s diplomats were more concerned with nurturing and maintaining solid political relationships with Washington, in recent times, the focus has shifted to ‘economic diplomacy’. She assured the audience that the Jamaican Embassy in Washington, DC, was focused on building a framework and providing the facilitation to make the partnership for development a reality.

However, she pointed out that her observations were those of a diplomat who is still learning the craft and her approach would be “to identify the major stages in the development of Jamaica’s international relations since Independence to locate within that process the emergence of investment and commerce as priorities in the job description of the diplomat”.

Said Marks: “This includes identifying the areas in which we can be competitive, and learning as quickly as possible the keys to success in this highly competitive global economy. You have an ambassador in Washington who is seized with the importance of optimising trade and investment opportunities for Jamaican entrepreneurs.”

Promoting trade, investment

The ambassador noted that the job description of today’s diplomat now places emphasis on “promoting trade and investment”, a mandate for which many missions in Washington have already started to replace staff with a doctorate in political science to those with a “doctorate” earned in the private sector by experience.

She further stressed that state agencies responsible for economic development are being integrated with the work of the missions to enable the home country to speak with the same voice and to respond quickly on all matters relating to trade and investment.

Marks noted then that if the new job description for the Jamaican Mission in North America is to “expand trade and secure investment, then it automatically implies the integration of the human resource with the opportunities for development in the homeland”.

She explained to her receptive audience that her mandate to build a partnership for development between Jamaica and the US is not possible without the deepest collaboration with the Jamaican diaspora in North America, where the major part of Jamaica’s intelligentsia and entrepreneurial capacity resides. It would therefore be prudent for AmCham to avail itself of the opportunities in areas that Jamaica could be competitive, thus leading to success in this highly competitive global economy, and thereby optimising trade and investment opportunities for Jamaican entrepreneurs.

Source: The Gleaner