By: Staff Writer
August 1, 2025
A Jamaican cabinet minister touts the success of a countrywide inclusion project aimed at securing a peaceful investment climate at the Caribbean Investment Forum, 2025 being held in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Fayvall Williams, minister of finance and the public service in Jamaica, said at the official opening of the 2025 Caribbean Investment Forum that: “A secure environment is a precondition, we believe, for private investment, and we are determined to make Jamaica a safe place to live, work, raise families and do business.
We also recognize that regional security cooperation must remain a top priority, especially in the face of transnational threats that know no borders.
She added: “We in Jamaica believe that this is not simply a time for adaptation. It is a time for ambition, and ambition must be matched by a framework that is disciplined, data driven, and future focused. That is the ethos behind Jamaica’s new growth strategy, which we call Aspire.
“Aspire speaks to access to opportunity. This must be the foundation of any growth model that is truly transformational. We must ensure that growth is broad based and inclusive, reaching every community and every citizen.”
The Government of Jamaica unveiled last year a bold new framework to guide the nation’s pivot to inclusive economic growth: ASPIRE Jamaica.
This strategy, outlines six pillars critical for transforming Jamaica into a modern, peaceful, productive and prosperous society.
ASPIRE stands for:
- Access to Economic Opportunity for All (Inclusive Growth)
- Safety and Security
- People (Human Capital Development)
- Infrastructure Development
- Reform of the Bureaucracy (Ease, Speed, and Cost of Doing Business)
- Economic Diversification/New Industries
Williams also said: “We’re strengthening social protection, improving access to credit for MSMEs, reforming pension systems for informal workers and supporting entrepreneurship across sectors from agriculture to animation. Our financial. Inclusion strategy and the roll-out of a national digital ID are helping to ensure that no Jamaican is left behind in the digital economy. This is the kind of growth we all aspire to, growth that is not just top down, but bottom up and community driven.
“Aspire speaks as well to safety and security. There can be no prosperity without safety and security. Since 2016 we have implemented the most comprehensive overhaul of national security policy in our modern history, expanding the police and military, modernizing equipment, introducing technology driven intelligence tools and targeting organized criminal networks through legislative reforms and zones of special operations, the result has been a precipitous decline in violent crime and a correspondent increase in investor and community confidence.”