Address by Douglas Orane, C.D.
Chairman & CEO, GraceKennedy Limited
at the Convention of the National Association of Jamaican & Supportive Organizations, Inc. (NAJASO)
on Saturday, July 15, at the Silver Spring Hotel, Maryland, USA
at 8:00 pm

Thank you for giving me this opportunity of addressing the 29 th Annual Convention of NAJASO - an organization which has made a significant contribution in establishing and maintaining solidarity among Jamaicans in North America. You have also helped considerably in keeping your membership in touch with and focused on developments in our country, also making useful contributions to its development in a variety of ways.

You deserve our thanks for many achievements, but we also recognize and appreciate the hard work and thought that have gone into sustaining the organization over its life span of 29 years. As a group representing our Diaspora, you have in fact pre-dated the official efforts being made in the past few years to forge links between Jamaica and various groups in the Diaspora. I am sure that you may be able to offer important insights to this movement.

In thinking about what I would say to you this evening, I thought I might touch on three topics - first, I would give you a brief background and update you on the company with which I have the honour to be associated - GraceKennedy Limited. Secondly, I would explore briefly the experience of someone like myself who decided to live in Jamaica touching on the relationship between groups like yours who live outside of Jamaica, and thirdly, I would talk a little about the need and the opportunities that exist for people like yourself who wish to reconnect with Jamaica.

I will begin by asking -

What is GraceKennedy doing to satisfy the unmet needs of our people in the 21 st Century?

GraceKennedy, I believe, is well known to all of you in this room, so I will be very brief about our history. We were founded in 1922 by the Grace and Kennedy families with James Moss-Solomon Senior as the first accountant. From our inception the founding families infused the organization with a sense of caring for every human being which is the genesis of our Grace "We care" ethos. One manifestation of this philosophy is seen when GraceKennedy started selling shares to its employees from 1928.

Today, we are a professionally run, publicly traded corporation with over 7,000 shareholders. We are pioneers in the Caribbean being the first Caribbean company to be listed on all four major stock exchanges in the region, that is, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Exchanges.

What I think most important is our mission, which is, "To satisfy the unmet needs of Jamaicans and other Caribbean people wherever we live in the world".

To meet these needs, we try to listen carefully at all times to people like yourselves who, as an important market segment, help to guide our business decisions.

I thought that you might be interested on a brief review of our progress.

Struck by the reality that children of Jamaican parentage in the Diaspora know little about the country of their forefathers, we devised a programme which selects between six and eight of the best candidates from the U.S., Canada and the UK and bring them to Jamaica for a period of two months.

The criteria for applicants are:

In Jamaica, we expose those on the programme as widely as possible to Jamaican society, its history, culture, music, food and very importantly to a wide cross-section of people. At the same time, we give them the opportunity to learn about business in Jamaica by working stints with GraceKennedy companies.

We are now in the third year of the programme and from all the feedback the programme is very successful.

These young people have become enthusiastic ambassadors on Jamaica and the Jamaican way of life and we are sure that their influence will continue to be felt over the years.

Here is a second question I will now ask - "What is a new definition of Jamaica and Jamaicans?"

Let me touch briefly on the process which is developing quite rapidly which defines what one might call a Jamaica without borders. For purposes of description, I represent this evening the Jamaicans who took decisions to live in Jamaica and people like yourselves here this evening represent those who took decisions to live abroad.

Is there a difference between us - in my view, there is nothing fundamentally different about us.

My decision to live in Jamaica was made on a number of personal reasons by my wife and myself; this has worked for us and our three children. We all learnt to adapt to the eccentricities of Jamaican life as well as to love the physical beauty of the country and the many Jamaicans with whom we come in contact experiencing at first hand their warmth and good humour. Needless to say, we have also had to cope with the darker side of Jamaica expressed mainly in crime and violence. But on balance, it's a good life.

On the other hand, there are people like yourselves for different but equally valid reasons who took decisions to seek their fortunes overseas. You have done so, I am sure, at some emotional cost but the vast majority of you have not only done well for yourselves both socially and economically but importantly made valuable contributions to your adopted countries. I say more power to you.

We are two parts of the equation that make up what I called earlier - the "Jamaica without borders". I am part of the 2.5 million Jamaicans who live at home and you are part of the estimated 2.5 million Jamaicans who live overseas.

What do we have in common? We are Jamaicans first and foremost, through and through. We may speak with slightly different accents but when you come right down to it, we love Jamaica, we are proud of our Jamaican heritage and we know that as Jamaicans we may be few in number but that our spirit, our courage, our love of life, our determination to advance ourselves the way our families function as support systems, the way we make music, the way we dance, the way we interact with each other, proclaims to the world that we are a unique and God-blessed people.

And today in this 21 st Century, we are beginning to come fully to the realisation that if we join hands and hearts across the world there is no limit to what we can achieve!

So, let us proudly proclaim that no matter where we live whether in or out of Jamaica, we are part of the growing reality of "Jamaica without borders". I see a bright future for our country and all of us when we begin to express the vast potential which exists among us.

So, here is my third question - How can you reconnect with Jamaica?

There are innumerable ways in which you can reconnect with our country Jamaica. Just take a little time to explore areas of need and work on programmes to meet these needs.

I have myself in recent years devoted some of my resources in helping my Alma Mater Wolmer's and I have found this very emotionally satisfying. I recommend that you reconnect with the school you attended in Jamaica, as well as, any tertiary institutions you may have also attended. In the US, the typical family donates 2% of annual family income to philanthropic causes. Ask yourself the question "Are you doing so and what percentage are you giving back to the institution in Jamaica that may have helped you to make what you are today?" Besides money for education, many of our schools require guidance in terms of institution building. I will give you one example which is how a single individual's intervention can make a world of difference. Fred Kennedy, whose grandfather was one of the founders of GraceKennedy, has been a teacher most of his career in Canada. He decided to devote two years to his Alma Mater St. Georges College as the principal and has transformed a school from being one that was in crisis to being one of the top educational choices for students. Today, they are now including young women. You may not know this, but over the last year, he has converted St. George's sixth form to be co-educational. Not everyone can devote two years in this way but you may be able to devote a few days per year towards an institution. The need to help in this way may actually be greater than the need for money at this time.

Then there is the area of investments. Increasingly, there is a realisation that reconnection can bring excellent financial rewards to those who invest wisely and effectively in Jamaica. Certainly many foreigners have seen the advantage to invest in Jamaica, for example, the level of foreign investment in Jamaica has reached exceedingly high levels in the last few years in tourism, the bauxite and alumina industries and in infrastructure.

Here are some specific suggestions for you as to how the Diaspora can reconnect.

The Jamaican Stock Exchange has 41 companies listed. Investing in equities on a publicly traded exchange is one of the most effective ways to create long term wealth. The Stock Exchange Index increased by 529% between 1996 and 2005. If you invested US$1,000 at the start of 1996 to mirror the index your investment would now be worth at December 2005, US$3,247.85 a 225% increase. There are 11 stock broking firms in Jamaica, our First Global Financial Services is one. You can get the names and addresses of all registered stock broking firms in Jamaica from the Jamaica Stock Exchange website - www.jamstockex.com .

There is an excellent investment opportunity to invest in accounts specially designed for non-resident Jamaicans called "A" accounts. This allows you to hold your investments in a foreign currency account at a Jamaican bank and not be subject to Jamaican income tax or withholding tax. This type of account is currently yielding a materially higher interest rate than a similar investment in the US. You can locate all the commercial banks in Jamaica by going to the Bank of Jamaica website - www.boj.org.jm .

Then there are the growing opportunities in real estate. The real estate prices in Jamaica have been climbing steadily over the last several years. There is a demand for real estate, particularly residential, commercial and industrial. An interesting phenomenon is that Kingston has now run out of large warehousing facilities after a surplus in the late 1990s and early 2000s and it is spawning an increase in the building of industrial space for warehousing.

There is an increasing demand similar to what you see in the North American market for gated residential communities. This is true not only for Jamaicans living in Jamaica but also for expatriates who may be working in Jamaica for a period of time as well as members of the Jamaican Diaspora who wish to return home for a secure environment.

Of interest is the Palmyra development in Montego Bay adjacent to the Ritz Carlton with residential units being offered from US$400,000 to US$2 million. My understanding is that several of these units have been sold even though construction has not yet started. Buyers are looking at prices and although high to us as resident Jamaicans, people overseas view these apartments as selling at a discount to South Florida. Many of the purchasers are Jamaicans in the Diaspora.

Regarding commercial real estate, the prices of office space is increasing but typically has not reached replacement value as we are still coming out of a period of excess office supply. One option is for you to buy into a stratad office building. A second option is for a group of you to form a syndicate and purchase an entire office building and have it managed by one of the professionally run real estate companies in Jamaica. To obtain a list of all the licensed real estate agents in Jamaica, you can go to the website for the real estate board in Jamaica - www.reb.gov.jm .

There have been investments by members of the Diaspora in recent years, the most visible is the purchase of National Commercial Bank by Michael Lee Chin, his subsequent investment in several other businesses in Jamaica including other listed companies on the Jamaican Stock Exchange. I believe he would confirm that these have been some of the best investments he has made in his career.

In a word, Jamaica offers superb opportunities for investors; it also needs the philanthropic assistance which many of you are now in a position to extend by offering your time, experience and expertise to many who desperately need help so that they can break the bonds of poverty which now hold them captive.

Let us begin to make "Jamaica without borders" a reality which will enrich all of us - those who give and those who receive.

Together, we can make Jamaica an even greater place in the world than it is today.

May God bless you all.

Posted July 17,2006