THE EDITOR, Sir:

After reading your piece on the JPS revenue shortfall in the online edition of The Gleaner (July 8), I am compelled to write you as to why Jamaican firms are not implementing modern financial techniques.

I am a Jamaican futures trader in America and I am fully aware of the challenges of the fluctuation of oil prices with the depreciating JMD, but the JPS should employ futures trading to hedge their exposure to these risk factors.

A company such as JPS should be using the futures market to profit from fluctuating oil prices and not use it as a liability in its operations.

I see too many large Jamaican companies not using modern financial instruments and modeling as similar firms in other countries that lead to greater efficiency and profitability.

Jamaican companies seem too nonchalant in their operations because most consider themselves operating in a monopoly or oligopoly environment. The problem that arises though is that inefficiencies lead foreign companies such as a Digicel into our market and they use these inefficiencies to their advantage. We as a country need to realise we are operating in a global marketplace and as barriers to entry continue to fall we must take operations to the next level in order to compete or we will be on the continual path of foreign companies profiting for our local market instead of our own.

Jamaica companies must be fast to change because the global economy is not slowing down for us.

E. Palmer

palmer@verticalinvest.com

Vertical Investment Group

North Carolina, USA