Projects financed by the World Bank Group have achieved important results in Jamaica in recent years. Some highlights include:
· More than 387,000 Jamaicans have benefited from the government’s Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH), a conditional cash transfer program that helps improve school attendance and health visits of children in poor households, putting families on a better path, and building the country’s human capital.
· The Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI) helped to improve market access for micro- and small-scale farmers and their service providers by supporting revenue-generating activities in agriculture and tourism, while also providing critical infrastructure, marketing, and management support. More than 1,400 farmers have benefited from improved technology, training, and access to markets. A Second REDI project signed in March 2020 will scale up investments and will benefit more than 20,000 individual beneficiaries—of which an estimated 40% will be women and 30% youths.
· An education “passport” has been implemented to track the growth and progress of each Jamaican child in their first few years of life, while also setting the quality standards for Early Childhood Development institutions through the Early Childhood Development Project.
· The Jamaica Integrated Community Development Project has helped improve community safety and development in 18 economically and socially vulnerable inner city and rural communities by improving infrastructure such as solar street lighting, water supply systems, solid waste management, the installation of fire hydrants, and introducing violence interrupters and school-based violence prevention. More than 300 young people were trained in entrepreneurship, CPR & first aid, community mediation, and restorative justice.
· The Foundations for Competitiveness and Growth Project helps to strengthen the business environment in Jamaica, facilitate private investment in strategic infrastructure assets and support the transformation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises to high-potential supply chains.
· With the support of the Access to Finance for MSMEs Project, Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Jamaica are better able to access finance. This project also strengthens the Credit Enhancement Facility, a credit guarantee facility and enables the Jamaican business environment to provide more business development services to MSMEs. This project also provides funding for the development of new financing instruments based on movable assets.
· The Jamaica Energy Security and Efficiency Enhancement Project has supported the development of regulations and policies for renewable energy and natural gas, contributing to an increase of generation capacity from 9% at the start of the project, to 12% in 2017, and is expected to reach over 20% in 2030.
· With support from the Strategic Public Sector Transformation Project, formal participatory budgeting has become part of the annual budgeting process in Jamaica since 2015, strengthening the management of public investments. A public investment management system has been put in place to help policymakers provide better governance of public investments.
· The Youth Employment in Digital and Animation Industries Project is building on successful pilots in the Digital Jam and KingstOOn events, with more than 4,000 young Jamaicans engaged in digital enterprises, supporting the growth of the Jamaican animation training and industry.
· As disaster risk management has become a key priority for Jamaica, the Climate Data and Information Management Project is helping improve collection and analysis of climate data while strengthening early warning systems. The Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP) is helping to enhance physical resilience to disasters. The Bank is supporting Jamaica to elaborate and put in place a comprehensive disaster risk financing architecture.
· IFC supported the BMR Jamaica Wind Project, a 36-megawatt wind farm, which is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 66,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, equivalent to taking roughly 13,000 cars off the road.
· IFC has worked with several financial institutions to establish SME best practices, improving reach to a financially underserved sector. IFC is in discussions with financial institutions to help mitigate the effects of COVID-19.
· In Agriculture, IFC worked with Jamaican coffee producers to help increase the quality and quantity of coffee grown and processed through a combination of activities focused on improving genetics, sharing best practices in agronomy, and creating inclusive business models. The project facilitated the distribution and planting of over 300,000 coffee seedlings along with technical training to improve productivity. IFC also advised a group of Jamaican producers of sauces and spices on how to strengthen the value chain of SMEs in the sector by enhancing market linkages, using market feedback to address supply-side coordination failures, and improving food safety standards. IFC recently started the Agricultural Supply Chain Linkages project to identify agricultural products that can be produced at a comparative advantage for the Jamaica market.
· IFC is working with the Government of Jamaica on several advisory projects to improve the secured transactions environment, support e-titling with the land agency, build a trade portal with key information on goods exports and imports, and support investment climate reforms. IFC works with Jamaica Promotions Corporation to assist in the implementation reforms in areas measured by investment climate indicators.
· On secured transactions, IFC provided support in the design of a reverse factoring platform to work with anchor firms via the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ), and support the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in deepening the market for moveable asset-based lending using the collateral registry and secured transactions framework.
· IFC’s technical assistance contributed to the development of a national trade facilitation roadmap and supporting the newly formed Trade Facilitation Task Force. The program supports the simplification and modernization of the complex and inefficient trade regime including developing a trade information portal, building capacity to apply risk management, simplification of procedures and modernization of the Jamaica Customs Act.
· Recently, IFC worked with the Jamaican government to improve the regulatory, institutional, and administrative framework for business taxation in addition to advising on the public-private-partnership concession for the Norman Manley International Airport, which is expected to improve airport access and quality of services for passengers, expand infrastructure capacity, and spur private investment.
Last Updated: Apr 13, 2020
