Christopher Burgess | Special Economic Zones for industrial transformation

Jamaica’s industrial landscape is fragmented – small entities that have neither scaled nor retooled. Many remain uncompetitive and lack export capacity. A recent visit to a factory in St Catherine reveals machinery from the 1960s still in use, while their counterparts in southern Africa produce 10-fold the quantities using modern machines. 
We cannot grow with outdated production. We must retool and scale where we have skills.
Jamaica is losing ground in investment and trade. Foreign direct investment declined from US$1.3 billion in 2008 to US$300 million in 2024, signalling a deteriorating investment climate. Similarly, the trade deficit has widened from roughly US$1.5 billion pre-2005 to about USD4.0 billion today, according to the World Bank. 
Investment is falling. The trade gap is widening. The direction is clear.
The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) framework, re-established in 2015 with the creation of SEZA, was intended to address these gaps by enabling a competitive environment for export-oriented industries. While some service-based sectors were created under SEZA, there is a drift into real estate and low-productivity activities –  rather than industrial transformation. 
With multiple industrial zones now proposed, Jamaica risks repeating mistakes without a coherent industrial policy. The World Bank is clear: SEZs are tools within a broader competitiveness strategy. 
Misaligned SEZs do not create growth – competitive industries do. Economic growth comes from focused export-oriented clusters, not infrastructure alone.
LOW-LEVEL SERVICES 
In Jamaica’s context, SEZs serve as an industrial tool – concentrating regulatory efficiency to compensate for limitations.
However, Jamaica’s current SEZ system reflects the wider economy. With over 60 approved developers and dozens of occupants in the SEZA registry, activity is concentrated in BPO services and logistics, rather than industrial exports. This reflects Jamaica’s advantages – labour-exporting services and geographic location.
Outside these sectors, industrial depth remains weak, with small and scattered agro-processing, light manufacturing, and warehousing for import logistics. Jamaica’s SEZs mirror our constraints.
You cannot warehouse your way to industrial growth. Low-value services cannot deliver productivity transformation.
CAYMANAS SEZ RISKS
The 2026 Caymanas SEZ Feasibility Study proposes 1,400 acres of multi-use zone. While the plan partially aligns with World Bank priorities in logistics, BPO, and niche food processing, it diverges by incorporating low-productivity activities like automotive repairs and unfocused manufacturing, in the context of high electricity rates. The absence of focused, export-driven clusters risks creating a fragmented zone rather than a competitive industrial hub.
The inclusion of automotive assembly and repairs in the feasibility study is particularly problematic. 
Car repairs will not transform the economy. This is a low-value activity with limited export potential and unlikely to compete regionally. 
Without focus, Caymanas risks becoming space – not industrial transformation driven by export clusters.
SUBSIDIES AND SKILLS
Industrial policy must be supportive and incorporate subsidies tied to productivity, exports, and technology upgrading. The Development Bank of Jamaica’s ICT loan facility provided concessionary financing to expand the BPO sector. This financing was supported in part by PetroCaribe inflows from Venezuela. The facility funded several large-scale call centres, enabling rapid build-out of outsourcing infrastructure. While successful in scaling the BPO sector, it largely supported customer support activities rather than higher-value knowledge services. Future subsidies must be targeted toward strategic clusters.
Skills development is equally critical to support higher-value activities. Each year, our universities train over 100 accountants, 200 doctors, and 200 attorneys. Yet the Caymanas SEZ Feasibility Study identified that “Jamaica has a shortage of mid- to upper-level management talent”. Government must address brain drain and create conditions that encourage young professionals to see opportunity in Jamaica, through affordable housing, livable wages and meaningful career opportunities.
LESSONS FROM AFRICA 
Africa’s SEZ experience attempting to replicate China failed because of the absence of discipline or integration. For over a decade, Nigeria’s Calabar Free Zone and Tanzania’s Bagamoyo SEZ struggled because of poor coordination, infrastructure, and governance issues that led to lack of investor confidence. 
By contrast, Zambia’s Lusaka South MFEZ demonstrates that success depends on alignment with competitive advantages, particularly through linkages to minerals and agro-industries, cheaper renewable power, and transport links. The zone now hosts food, drinks, tobacco, copper wire and cement manufacturers that export. 
Zambia didn’t just build zones – it built industries. As IMF deputy managing director and former Minister of Finance Dr Nigel Clarke noted following his 2025 visit to Zambia’s MFEZ, private sector-led dynamism was driving investment in manufacturing. 
SEZs can deliver economic growth when they enable firms to invest and export – unleashing private sector dynamism. 
STRATEGIC CLUSTERS
Jamaica must focus, cluster, and upgrade. The service sector should move up the value chain – from call centres to knowledge-based services such as fintech, legal, and accounting outsourcing. This shift can increase wages and foreign exchange earnings.
At the same time, Jamaica should develop two or three industrial clusters, not 10. A focused agro-processing cluster could link farms to export markets. A Kingston-based logistics-light manufacturing cluster could integrate port activity with light manufacturing. Imagine if Tinson Pen, Chesterfield and South Caymanas were joined by rail to the Port of Kingston, freeing up over 1,900 acres. The World Bank emphasises that clusters – not standalone zones – drive productivity and specialisation.
None of this will succeed without addressing high energy costs, weak public transport, wage stagnation, and limited competition in the banking sector. These drive up the cost of doing business in Jamaica.
Without a focused SEZ policy, the country risks building zones without building industry capable of closing the investment and trade gaps. The focus must shift from land development to competitive export-driven clusters. 
Jamaica cannot compete everywhere, but it must compete somewhere. Jamaica must choose where it can win.
Dr Christopher Burgess is a registered civil engineer, VP of engineering for the Jamaica Institution of Engineers, climate scientist, land developer, and managing director of CEAC Solutions. Send feedback to [email protected]