KINGSTON, Jamaica – President of the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA), John Mahfood, says the upcoming Expo Jamaica 2023 provides the opportunity for businesses to jump-start exports coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We see this as an event to re-energize our manufacturers, who are now gearing up and putting behind us, the recovery mode or survival mode and now looking to expand their businesses overseas.
My expectation is that this, more than any other Expo, will bring us together and galvanize the effort at exporting,” he said with regards to the 48th edition of Expo Jamaica, that will be held under the theme ‘Connecting the World to Jamaica”.
Mahfood said that the April 27-30 event at the National Indoor Sports Centre and the National Arena, will enable Jamaican businesses to meet and develop relationships with various buyers and distributors from all over the globe over a short period of time and at one location.
He said it would be difficult and costly for local entrepreneurs to make these contacts if they had to travel to seek these markets by themselves.
“So, imagine if you were to visit all of the countries in the Caribbean and spend three or five days trying to find distributors for your products? It would take a significantly long time to go through every country and it would be very expensive,” he said.
The JMEA president said that the business sector has faced challenges due to COVID-19 and that “Jamaica has bounced back in a strong way.
“We are at a point where we have to be thinking strategically about growing our businesses. We have many years of good fortune to come, and this is the greatest opportunity for our business people to step up and step out of the conservative mode that we have been in, and that is what I hope we will see from this expo,” he said.
