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he central objective of the Vi-sion 2030 Jamaica - National De-velopment Plan is that Jamaica

should be “the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business”. Economic stability is key if the country is to achieve this goal. So far, we have seen a major investment thrust from the Chinese, including road and housing projects; there is also strong interest in the financial sector. However, Chinese investments alone cannot help to drive the local economy forward, so the gov-ernment is actively courting other po-tential financiers.

Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Hon. Karl Samuda, was recently in Canada on one such mis-sion. Speaking at the JAMPRO Invest in Jamaica Toronto Forum held at the Delta Chelsea Hotel in Toronto, Minis-ter Samuda assured potential investors that opportunities abound in Jamaica for them to create wealth while assisting the Jamaican economy.

He explained that the Government has put in place several measures designed to create economic stability, which have resulted in low inflation and inter-est rates, high reserves and stable ex-change rates. These factors have made doing business with Jamaica the easiest it has ever been. Minister Samuda also highlighted investment opportunities in areas such as: health, sports, tourism, information communications technol-ogy (ICT), agro-industry, manufacturing, creative Industries and energy.

Minister Samuda noted the agro-indus-try sector is still virtually untouched and

quoted a Jamaican proverb to show the fertility of the Jamaican soil: “if you plant a bone, you will get a cow. Our land is so fertile. Our flavours are unequalled.

We need investors to set up business in Jamaica and create jobs,” he said, add-ing that economic recovery can only be achieved in an atmosphere of sound economic policies, the development of a productive and competitive labour force, establishing a business friendly environment with minimal bureaucracy, and developing hard and soft infrastruc-ture.

Investing in Jamaica’s agricultural sec-tor represents an opportunity to realize significant profits, as agricultural exports over the last five years have generated some US$100 million in revenue. Cur-rently, agriculture contributes 5.65% to the Jamaican economy and employs over 18% of the workforce. Investment opportunities in the local agricultural sector include: rice, yam, irish and sweet potatoes, cocoa, coffee, pineapple, on-ion, ginger, honey and sheep production.

The Government has extended numer-ous incentives to investors in the agricul-tural sector, including: income tax relief; online registration for importers and ex-porters that allows access to all trade-related agencies; duty concessions on production related imports; access to information on product marketing and trade statistics; incentives to provide investors with information on financing and technical assistance; and contract farming joint venture opportunities to produce crops all year round.

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So far, we have seen a major investment thrust from the Chinese, including road and housing projects; there is also strong interest in the financial sector. However, Chinese in-vestments alone cannot help to drive the local economy forward, so the government is actively courting other poten-tial financiers.

Jamaica Looks to canada for More foreign investMents

The Honourable Karl Samuda, Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce speaking.

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Minister Samuda noted that the country is moving in the right direction to fa-cilitate investors, including reducing bu-reaucracy. Jamaica is now ranked 13th out of 34 countries in the region, includ-ing Canada, the United States and Mex-ico, under the Doing Business Report. Developed infrastructure in the coun-try includes: telecommunications; the proposed Caymanas Economic Zone located at Ferry in St. Catherine, which will showcase a variety of businesses on 200 acres of land; an Informatics Park in Portmore; highways; ports and three international airports.

Minister Samuda pointed out that the United States has adopted a “near-shore policy” and Jamaica is ideally situ-

ated, with access to North America, Central America, South America and Europe. “Coupled with the infrastruc-ture that we already have we now need to expand at a rapid rate. We have the land, we have the determination; now we need capital to invest and to partner with us.”

Minister Samuda also credited the work JAMPRO has been doing in attract-ing Foreign Direct Investment (FDIs). “While we are a small economy, it is not insignificant that we have, over the past five years, been able to attract total For-eign Direct Investments of US$4.8 bil-lion,” he said.

Jamaica is now ranked 13th out of 34 countries in the re-gion, including Canada, the United States and Mexico, under the Doing Business Re-port. Developed infrastruc-ture in the country includes: telecommunications; the pro-posed Caymanas Economic Zone located at Ferry in St. Catherine, which will show-case a variety of businesses on 200 acres of land; an In-formatics Park in Portmore; highways; ports and three international airports.

Jamaica Looks to canada for More foreign investMents

(L-R) Mr. Mark Josephs, General Manager of Kisko (Jamaican businessman living in Canada); The Honourable Karl Samuda, Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce; Mr. Seth George

Ramocan, Jamaica’s Consular General in Toronto

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vaya, a global provider of business collaboration sys-tems, software and services,

recently unveiled its new products and innovations for the small and medium business market in Jamaica. These prod-ucts include Avaya IP Office 7.0, the new version of the company’s communica-tions solution for the local market, which helps increase savings and improve user experiences and collaboration to sup-port entrepreneurs, early-stage compa-nies and mid-size firms.

“As the economy shifts into a higher gear, today’s small and medium busi-nesses need the best tools available to collaborate and compete effectively. Avaya IP Office 7.0 provides advanced communications for this market, provid-ing vast unified communications capabili-ties, with a focus on simplicity and sav-ings. Customizable systems are critical for small businesses [and] Avaya’s IP Of-fice is extremely flexible in how it can be configured and customized for a small company’s specific needs,” said Avaya President, John DiLullo.

Avaya is also working with its partners in the region including LIME, as a key part-ner, in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis and Turks and Caicos, offering Avaya IP Of-fice 7.0 to all small and medium business customers

Avaya IP Office 7.0 CapabilitiesAvaya IP Office 7.0 completes the inte-gration of Nortel Enterprise Solutions (NES) IP and digital phones into the IP Office platform. This integration now

enables approximately 14 million NES users to gain Avaya IP Office’s collabora-tion capabilities and can drive between 40%-60% in savings for NES custom-ers by enabling them to retain existing phones when upgrading to Avaya IP Of-fice. This upgrade can be accelerated and simplified by a new Data Migration Tool that lets partners transfer a compa-ny’s existing data such as voicemails and phone extensions to their new systems without interruption.

Avaya IP Office 7.0 also delivers more devices for multimedia collaboration, including new color touchscreen desk-top phones that let users scroll through contacts or manage visual voicemail and new conference room phones offer pat-ented wide-band audio, call recording via SD card, and fast USB connectivity to a laptop for temporary set-ups. These are part of a portfolio that offers a range of advanced communications, such as HD videoconferencing via desktop PC with no added equipment required.

Forthcoming Capabilities, New DemosThe company is also exploring a hybrid cloud approach to small and medium enterprise communications, which plac-es Avaya IP Office on premises, while enabling select applications to be hosted on a partner network. This capability will allow more flexible use and faster deployment of Avaya’s latest collabora-tion applications.

AvAyA HelPs smAll AND mID-sIze COmPANIes ‘think Big’ with enhanced collaBoration Products

and new innovations

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“As the economy shifts into a higher gear, today’s small and medium businesses need the best tools available to collabo-rate and compete effectively. Avaya IP Office 7.0 provides ad-vanced communications for this market, providing vast unified communications capabilities, with a focus on simplicity and savings. Customizable systems are critical for small businesses [and] Avaya’s IP Office is ex-tremely flexible in how it can be configured and customized for a small company’s specific needs.”

: (l-r) Paulo Manzato, Managing Director Carib-bean & Bermuda AVAYA, Camille Taylor, Corpo-rate Communications Mngr Lime, John DiLullo,

President AVAYA AI, Lloyd Distant Jnr, Managing Director Customer Segments Lime and Suzanne Saunders, Regional Head of Corporate Segments

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insightsbyTracey-Ann Wisdom

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anadian humourist Stephen Leacock is quoted as saying,

“Advertising [is] the science of arrest-ing the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” This seems es-pecially true of television ads, which combine funny, sexy, quirky and oth-erwise entertaining visuals with just the right sound bite in a bid to convince viewers that they need to drink that soda or buy that new Weed Wacker. No matter how much you despise tele-vision commercials, there is at least one that earns a chuckle or two, one jingle that pops into your head every now and then for no good reason.

However, the advent of digital, on-de-mand and digital video recorder (DVR) technologies has led to a noticeable decline in TV ad viewership. After all, why suffer through a 30-second intru-sion into your favourite programme when you can now hit the fast-forward button and send it to oblivion? Conse-quently, the TV ad appears to be on the way out altogether. Or is it?

According to a recent CNN Business story, Britain became the first major economy to spend more on online marketing than on television in 2009, with the internet accounting for 23.5% of all ad money, compared to TV’s 21.9%. In addition to on-demand and DVR, digital viewing habits also include watching programmes online on sites like YouTube, Vevo and Hulu. While these sites do advertise, the spots are usually shorter and precede the video clip instead of interrupting.

But is the TV commercial really dead? No, say the pundits. In fact, they point to a renaissance, driven by expansion in developing countries like Kenya, Nigeria, China, India and Argentina, developing countries where internet penetration is comparatively low. Sta-tistics produced by the Magnaglobal data mapping agency show that while worldwide internet advertising budgets will grow 12.5% annually to $117.5 billion by 2016, TV spending will also rise between 6% and 9% annually to $243.3 billion. Additionally, accord-ing to a STRATA survey in the US, TV remained the top advertising choice in the first quarter of 2010, with 41.8% of ad agencies saying their corporate cli-ents are more focused on TV than any other medium, although the number was down a whopping 27% from a year ago. Internet/digital advertising contin-ues to increase with 68% of clients re-porting that their customers are more focused on digital than they were a year

ago. “To advertisers, TV still matters,” said John Shelton, STRATA President/CEO. “But just as radio gave way to television, we can see that TV is slowly giving way to digital. The good news for TV stations and networks -- for now – is that they remain the dominant medium.”

David Droga, head of Manhattan-based ad agency Droga5, stated that great TV commercials will always be relevant, even in the digital age, once advertisers continue to up their game.

Surprisingly, the internet is also help-ing to revive TV ads through ‘double screening’, where viewers chronicle what they are watching on social media sites like Twitter. This practice is be-lieved to boost the size of the viewing audience.

Therefore, it seems that even as tech-nology advances, advertisers shouldn’t forget that many people still passively consume television, so TV commercials will never completely go away.

After all, why suffer through a 30-second intrusion into your favourite programme when you can now hit the fast-forward button and send it to oblivion?

THE 30-SECOND AD?Has digitaL kiLLed

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he idea for a new business venture usually originates with one person. Sometimes,

that individual is able to do all the work and make that idea a reality. However, in most cases, he would share his idea with at least one person who is able to help him work out the kinks, add to the origi-nal thought, thus enabling the business to go in unforeseen directions, or bring to the table a skill set that the person with the idea does not possess. These are some of the primary benefits of go-ing into business with a partner, which is a good option for young entrepreneurs, many of whom often lack all the neces-sary components to get the business from idea to actuality on their own.

A single founder wears all hats, but a partner can choose the one that fits best. For example, if you are starting a graph-ics company but you are only skilled in design, you would benefit from partner-ing with someone with business acumen, such as sales and marketing experience, to help position your products.

However, partnerships can be tricky and require effort to maintain a seamless operation. Here are some important points to consider before approaching potential business partners:

CreAte A sHAreD vIsION AND mIssION FOr tHe busINess. Get everyone on the same page by de-fining the purpose of the business and outlining the goals and what each per-son will contribute to their attainment. If you find that there are irresolvable dif-

ferences among your potential partners, it is best to seek assistance elsewhere. If you can’t agree at the start, there is little chance you will work well together.

Get eACH PersON’s exPeCtAtIONs CleAr. Each partner has his own reason for getting involved in your business, some-thing that they want to achieve or get out of the venture. Before you sign any agreements, discuss what each person’s expectations from the business are and come up with a plan in case these expec-tations change over time.

WrIte DOWN jOb rOles. Lack of clarity around job roles is a major source of frustration and disap-

pointment in many partnerships. It’s not enough to assume that each person knows exactly what he is responsible for. Discuss and write down each per-son’s individual responsibility to ensure a sense of accountability.

IDeNtIFy AND suPPOrt lImItAtIONs. You are an artist and your partner is a sales and marketing genius, but neither of you have accounting expertise. De-cide from the start how you are going to address this gap, such as by hiring an ac-countant. Ignoring these gaps can cause your business to fail.

HANDle DIsAGreemeNts eArly. Differences are bound to crop up when-ever people work together. Neutralize them before they get out of hand and destroy the business. Decide from the start how you will work through any dif-ficulties that arise and make an effort to remain professional.

mAke It OFFICIAl. It is good to get everybody together and discuss what each is responsible for, but all of this really has no weight until you sign on the dotted line. After you have reached an agreement with all parties, put it in an official partnership contract that everyone can refer to should the need arise.

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Differences are bound to crop up whenever people work to-gether. Neutralize them before they get out of hand and destroy the business.

byTracey-Ann Wisdom

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