Jamaica Considering Establishment of Diaspora Database

Above: Kingston

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Jamaica’s government is considering the creation of a database of Jamaican investors and professionals living in the diaspora, according to Arnaldo Brown, State Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade.

“We will be embarking on a mapping of this later on in the year with the assistance from the International Organization for Migration,” he said this week in a release.

Doing so would follow in the footsteps of several other countries like China, Israel and Mexico, he said.

“It is these persons that they have been able to use to leverage companies [and] states in order to unlock investments,” he said.

Jamaica also needs to have “designated bodies” to deal with Diaspora matters on a daily basis, he said, something that would require the strengthening of the Jamaica Diaspora Foundation and the Jamaica Diaspora Institute.

“Those structures will have to be beefed up because the range of issues that the Diaspora is engaged in is far and wide. We will have to look at a model that is specific to Jamaica to allow for that type of engagement to take place, for it is really a full-time activity if we are going to leverage,” he said in a government release.