Robert Stephens has promised an additional $400 million a year of capital inflows over the next half a decade or so because of the fillip Jamaica will get from hosting matches in the Cricket World Cup which will have its opening ceremony here next month.

We suppose that Mr. Stephens knows what he is talking about, being in charge of the so-called cricket legacy programme at Jamaica Trade and Invest (JAMPRO renamed) and having, we expect, tested his various assumptions in all kinds of econometric models. We, of course, hope that Mr. Stephens is correct, for Jamaican taxpayers to shell out nearly $8 billion, to build new stadiums and spruce up the environment in preparation for the tournament.

In as much as we would wish to have the matches here just for the sake of the cricket, $8 billion is a lot of money in the context of a relatively poor country, which is constantly juggling priorities in order to deliver what many would consider to be basic services. Our Government, however, made a choice, believing the exposure that will come from hosting CWC 2007 will provide a platform from which to circulate the message that 'Jamaica is open for business'. Anybody who does not grasp this concept and cannot comprehend Jamaica's expected legacy from the tournament, we have been told by Mr. Stephens, deserves to have "his head examined".

We expect that Mr. Stephens will be held to his promise. And given his confidence, we would suggest that Mr. Stephens offer his employers, the Jamaican taxpayers, a performance criteria and, perchance he is on a short-term contract, time his compensation against the capital inflows.

Also, assuming that there was no natural growth in the average annual foreign direct investment of recent years, we can, based on Mr. Stephens' projection, expect FDI in the post-CWC period to jump to around US$1.1 billion a year.

But assuming that CWC 2007 spurs this 57 per cent jump in FDI, the issue that then faces Jamaica is how to get the best bang for the buck. In other words, we have to do the things that will maximise return on the investment.

Not so long ago, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was lecturing us on the fact that in other countries of similar size and development, the level of FDI received by Jamaica would be stimulating growth of about six per cent a year. Jamaica is struggling to achieve real GDP expansion of three per cent.

A substantial part of the cause of low economic return on investment, the experts say, is the level of corruption in the country, the high level of informality in the economy and weaknesses in the judicial management.

From the global economic perspective, repairing the judicial system is perhaps the most urgent of the issues to be tackled. For confidence in a country's capacity to arbitrate commercial disputes is often critical to the investment decisions made by corporations. No matter how jurisprudentially sound is the system, companies do not want to wait a decade for a matter to be settled.

Some of these fixes are not as difficult as is sometimes assumed. Take a recent civil court hearing when one party asked permission of the judge to use a private stenographer. The judge was welcoming, declaring that "perhaps one day we will always have them with us".

Let it be from today.