By the Caribbean Journal staff

Jamaican political and business leaders recently took center stage at a trade and investment forum at Bloomberg’s international headquarters in New York City, in an event coordinated by Dr Geneive Brown Metzger, Jamaica’s Consul General to New York.

Minister of Finance Audley Shaw and Industry Minister Dr Christopher Tufton discussed Jamaica’s debt restructuring, the sale of loss-making assets and efforts to attract foreign direct investment.

“Jamaica is open for business,” Tufton said, despite the announcement that the Prime Minister would be stepping down. “It is a natural part of the democratic process and it is important for all concerned to recognizes that it is business as usual.”

In a discussion of public debt, Shaw said Greece should follow Jamaica’s lead and restructure its national debt.

“Start with the debt exchange,” he said. “We had to do it because we had no other alternative.”

Shaw said he predicted that the economy would expand more than 2.5 percent in the 2011/2012 fiscal year.