Jamaica and Guyana exploring housing solutions

Prime Minister, Dr. Andrew Holness, has disclosed that Jamaica and Guyana are now exploring ways to work together on housing development. 

He made the disclosure in Guyana’s capital of Georgetown, where he is on a two-day visit. Speaking at the opening of the International Building Expo 2026, Dr. Holness identified scope for working together with Guyana in the housing sector. 

“I believe there are opportunities for Jamaica and Guyana to collaborate in the housing development sphere, particularly as it relates to labour and the deployment of new technologies in construction, and I look forward to advancing these conversations with your president to see how best we can collaborate, as two developing nations to improve our people’s access to housing,” he told the expo.

Dr. Holness highlighted that his administration has undertaken to directly provide 70,000 through the various agencies of government, while praising the Guyana government for fast-tracking the processing of titles for housing lands and its one-stop mechanism for processing applications. 

Applauded Guyana on housing approvals

The Prime Minister was pleased to hear that the Guyana government has a taken on with great courage the efficiency of the government bureaucracy in delivering the approvals for housing, through the one-stop system that has cut approval times from as high as three years to now three months.

Dr Holness recently told the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce that the country would have to eventually prepare itself for imported labour to forge ahead with the massive development projects that are in the pipeline. For him, Jamaica has already built 10,000 of the proposed 42,000 housing solutions, but the “greatest constraint” to building at scale is the availability of contractors, labour and technical skills that could operate with new innovations and new materials.

He admitted that the speed of government itself in giving planning and construction approvals was among Jamaica’s challenges, estimating that Jamaica has a housing deficit of approximately 150,000 housing units. Dr Holness used the opportunity to thank the Guyana government and the Guyana Defence Force soldiers for their role in the reconstruction of houses and other buildings in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa’s devastation last year.

“I must say that the members of your defence force did quite an amazing job, and all the reports of the people who benefited is that the workmanship was at the highest standard, and please convey to them again my great appreciation, but Jamaica will recover, and we have already started to recover,” he said in conclusion.