Discussions

I am a Jamaican, part of the diaspora, and I want to invest at home. Like many returning nationals and local entrepreneurs, I went looking for a modest parcel of government land to lease — half an acre, an acre, somewhere to base a small renewable-energy business. What I discovered was not a shortage of land. It was a shortage of visibility.

Try it yourself. Go online and attempt to answer a simple question: what Crown land is available for lease or purchase right now, and where? You will not find the answer. There is no list. There is no map you can filter. There is no catalogue of parcels with their size, parish, permitted use, and status. The land exists — roughly a sixth of the entire island is government-owned — but to the ordinary citizen it is invisible.
Entrepreneurs cannot plan around land they cannot find. A business case needs a location, a size, and a cost. Without a way to see options, the very first step of starting a land-based venture — agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, renewable energy — is a dead end before it begins.