Greater calls for more value added in the manufacturing sector

• December 01 2019
• http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sunday-finance/greater-calls-for-more-value-added-in-the-manufacturing-sector-training-is-a-key-component-in-getting-the-sector-ready_180979

The Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA) is supporting the need for a more highly skilled and competitive labour force. This they believe will increase the country's ability to provide more value-added products and services to the manufacturing sector, pursuant to training.

Metry Seaga, past president of the JMEA while speaking at last week's Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange said that from his position as chairman of the special economic zone (SEZ) he finds that as a country we have continued to remain in the bottom half when it comes to adding value to our own products.

“It is important for all of us to understand that what Jamaica has done from we born, is that we have taken our raw materials, we have allowed others to come here and take our raw materials and we send them away, and what they do over there is to add value to it, making themselves richer, sending the products back here and teaching us how to like those products.

“If we don't add value, we're going to stay where we are. Other nations have become rich off our backs , we have to start to reverse this and the only way to do that is to add value; so that manufacturing and agriculture and all of the things in production that are going to make us rich, we need to add the value here. We have to be at the top end of the totem pole, we can't stay at the bottom anymore,” he said.

He further reasoned that in order to change this pattern, the shifting of people's mindset will become very useful.

“We have got to flip that switch; we have to have a paradigm shift in our mindsets, to say no more of that! When we send sugar cane, coffee and bulk items away we are trading in commodities, we're not big enough to trade in commodities hence we will always be in a race to the bottom in that regard, so the answer is to add value here at home,” he said.

The JMEA past president and SEZ chairman argued that while Government has provided the necessary structures to become traders and service providers, they now need to make it easier for persons to become manufacturers and also be given the necessary resources needed for them to add value to their offerings. He shared the view that Jamaicans are some of the best workers in the world, requiring only the requisite training and compensation needed to match world standards.