VIEW ONE

“Many of the top business persons that I have spoken to, now tell me that the environment for doing business in Jamaica has never been better,” Dr Gladstone Hutchinson, Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), told a two-day Public Sector Monitoring Committee seminar on Tuesday . “They say this is the best macro-economic environment they have had to do business in. So now, I challenge them to go and do business.”

“But, they must now be asked to go one step further, and recognise that the Government’s trough is empty. No more waivers and fiscal incentives are sitting at the bottom of the trough for them to go drinking at. They must now start seizing the opportunities for new investments and entrepreneurism, from the lower interest rates and the incredible business environment that exists,” he said.

VIEW TWO

Jamaica scored its lowest ever global competitiveness ranking, slipping 12 spots to 107 at the same time it attained the dubious title as the world’s worst macroeconomy, according to the annual competitiveness index released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The world’s most competitive countries are Switzerland, Sinagpore, Sweden, Finland, United States and Germany, according to the Global Competitiveness Report 2011-12.

The US also fell one place in the rankings to No. 5 due to its untamed deficit of US$1.3 trillion and declining faith in government.

Jamaica, which ranked 67th in the world in 2006-07, has nose-dived to 107 among 142 countries. Jamaica’s rank, however, remains the fourth highest in the Caribbean with Guyana at 109, Dominican Republic at 101 and Haiti at 141.

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