State Minister Calls for Stronger Reciprocal Relations with Jamaican Community Overseas

Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Delano Franklyn, has said that there was the need for stronger reciprocal relationship with the large Jamaican community abroad to ensure greater support for the Jamaican economy. This relationship, he said, was even more urgent with the increasing changes in the global marketplace in the areas of business and trade.
Elaborating, the State Minister said that this association involved, business flowing from the Diaspora into Jamaica in terms of foreign direct investments in the form of information technology, agribusiness, tourism, manufacturing, minerals and chemicals or textile and the satisfaction of the demand for specific services.
He was speaking on Tuesday (Oct. 28) at the inaugural symposium hosted by the Mona School of Business of the University of the West Indies (UWI), in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. The theme of the symposium was, ‘The Jamaican Diaspora – Reciprocal Relations the Way Forward’. It was held at the University of the West Indies, Mona, in Kingston.
The symposium provided a forum for key representatives from the Diaspora to share their views on the opportunities, issues and challenges and make recommendations that could guide policy making where the involvement of the Diaspora was concerned for sustained development of Jamaica.
The Minister pointed out that, the Jamaican Government was treating the Jamaican overseas community with utmost importance and had been taking into consideration their ideas and proposals so that policies formulated on their behalf would not be one sided. He noted that implementation of the plans would take time, based on resources, but would be carried out. “We are going to be driving this process and we are going to be doing what is possible,” he stressed.