Howard Hamilton

I have been travelling and my travels have taken me back to The Bahamas, where I lived for a few years almost a decade and a half ago. My! How things have changed! Not that this was my first trip in all those years, but this time I was able to take a close look at things and reflect on a few comparisons with dear Jamaica.

It struck me how we have been losing ground in areas in which Jamaica was once the world leader and in which The Bahamas has been gaining. Some of the instances are quite remarkable, considering the disadvantages The Bahamas face.

I visited a cigar factory in downtown Nassau in which dozens of busy hands rolled aromatic leaves of tobacco into the elegant product that sufficiently impressed the judges at the recent international cigar show in Chicago to award them the 'best in show' prize. How remarkable. Particularly since The Bahamas does not produce a single leaf of tobacco.

The Bahamas has come 'out of left field', as American consumers of their cigars would say, to take the world by storm as a cigar-exporting nation. The standard of the Graycliff Cigar Factory's product is so high that its cigars have earned them fame and acclaim in a remarkable short time - less than a decade, while Jamaica's cigar industry - which once rivalled Cuba's - seems to have wafted away, like smoke.

This is a quandary. Jamaica has excellent soil for tobacco production. We grow excellent tobacco leaf here my tense may be wrong. Our labour force is abundant and not anywhere as expensive as that of The Bahamas (in fact many of the rollers in The Bahamas are imported, since that country now boasts a 95 per cent employment rate). All of which should provide Jamaica with a considerable advantage as a cigar exporter. Not so, it seems, and while we grope in the dark for an explanation, someone else is eating our lunch.

What's the difference?

This is not an isolated case. Take rum, for example: After the Cuban revolution, the Bacardi family fled the country and sought to establish their business elsewhere, ending up with sugar cane holdings in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and a factory and corporate headquarters in The Bahamas. Why The Bahamas, of all places?

They do not have sugar cane plantations, like we do in Jamaica. Nor do they have abundant unskilled labour. Their proximity to the United States market is a small advantage, but Jamaica is only 90 miles further away than Cuba, from which base they had made their name.

The difference is that there was a business climate that was friendly and welcoming to them, in which pragmatic decisions were made that provided sufficient incentive to overcome all the formidable disadvantages that The Bahamas offered. Today, Bacardi is the world's leading producer of rum and seems unlikely ever to be rivalled as such.

There are other areas in which Jamaica once led and in which we have lost ground: As a producer of ginger, for example, Jamaica once led the world. In fact, Jamaican ginger was virtually a brand that assured consumers of countless food and drink products of unrivalled excellence. Where is Jamaican ginger today? Who knows. Haven't heard the term, nor seen it on many packages these days.

Why is this? What is it that makes it possible, for manufacturers in Taiwan to produce canned jackfruit and successfully label and market it as Jamaica Pride, complete with our doctor birdsymbol and black, gold and green colours? What accounts for their success at selling bottled coconut water branded as Reggae Style?

What makes it possible for a California-based corporation to successfully operate a chain of boutiques across the U.S. under the brand Ragga Rags, selling their own notion of 'island wear' to the tune of our music and against the backdrop of out lifestyle and scenery?

These are questions to which answers must be sought. For they point to the fact that the Holy Grail that JAMPRO has pursued these long years does, in fact, exist. The answers to these questions will help point the way to the object of this quest.

Kerzner's letdown

Of course, there is also the tale in tourism circles that Sol Kerzner, owner of the resort empire once known as Sun International and which now bears his name as Kerzner International, had come to Jamaica 12 to 15 years ago in the hope of building his first Caribbean property here.

It is said that Kerzner's intent was to challenge Resorts International, which was at the time the subject of an acquisition battle between Donald Trump and Merv Griffin. Resorts International's property on Paradise Island in The Bahamas was the largest, most profitable and most spectacular resort complex in the English speaking Caribbean.

Kerzner sought to outdo them But, he was fated not to do it here as, the legend has it, he was rebuffed in his overtures, as the formula for operating resorts on that scale at the desired level of profitability demanded a casino at its heart and our government was having no part of that. How will Harmony Cove develop?

Kerzner, having eventually bought out Merv Griffin, the eventual winner of the Trump-Griffin bidding war and transformed the Paradise Island resort into Atlantis, one of the most spectacular complexes in the world, is today the second largest employer of Bahamians, after the Bahamian government.

Another lost opportunity for Jamaica. And, you know, I have a feeling that if another Sol Kerzner were tocome knocking at our doors with a similar proposal today, our reaction would be no different.