New Jamaican PM to Focus on Economy

By: - January 1st, 2012

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Following the People’s National Party’s landslide victory in Thursday’s election, incoming Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller said it was now time to “urgently get on with the business of creating more economic and social opportunities for our people.”

Jamaica, which is on the eve of the 50th anniversary of its independence from the United Kingdom, is at a significant crossroads, she said.

“It is time to achieve an authentic democracy which is of the people, for the people and by the people,” she said in her New Year message. “I call upon our vibrant and talented nation to recommit to our motto, ‘out of many, one people.’ We must maintain integrity and honesty of purpose in public life.”

She said a focus would be on energy and information and communication technology (ICT, which had been identified as the overarching sectors to drive innovation.

National action was required to create employment, and to generate wealth in “honest and productive ways,” according to Simpson Miller.

She also said the country’s economic revolution would utilize “science and technology as an engine for growth.”

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