The JSE Micro Market closes the capital gap and will support enterprise growth – Minister Aubyn Hill

Senator Aubyn Hill, who is the Minister of Industry, Investment & Commerce, made an address at the launch of the Jamaica Stock Exchange Micro Market, which took place at the Terra Nova Hotel in St. Andrew. 

Below is his full text: 

I am very pleased to be here as the Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Jamaica’s Business Ministry, for the long-awaited launch of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) Micro Market. 

I must commend the JSE for the discipline and vision it took to carry the Micro Market from strategic intent to the listing-ready platform before us this morning. This is a significant day for Jamaica because we are closing a gap that has stood between promising smaller Jamaican businesses and the capital they need to grow.

As Minister, I meet entrepreneurs with factory floors running, order books growing, and products that can compete anywhere in the world. Yet too many must either borrow against everything they own or remain small. Banks want collateral they do not have, grants run out, and the Main and Junior Markets are still beyond their reach. In that gap, businesses stall, jobs are not created, and export earnings are never realised.

This JSE Micro Market closes that gap. It gives a company raising between J$50 million and J$100 million a real, regulated path to reasonable and patient equity capital, with a Sponsor and a Mentor walking beside the investor, and a clear pathway to graduate to the Junior Market and beyond. This is important financial architecture. It is one way in which a small economy builds large companies.

Over the past ten years, the Jamaica Junior Market has steadily built up capital for growing businesses.

Year-end Market Capital JA$(Million)

• 2015 67,946.70
• 2016 103,417.58
• 2017 114,795.27
• 2018 139,776.81
• 2019 151,356.36
• 2020 119,696.80
• 2021 157,557.92
• 2022 194,289.82
• 2023 185,678.78
• 2024 148,453.61
• 2025 135,546.13

This record shows the Junior Market’s role in supporting enterprise growth, and the new Micro Market now gives smaller businesses a way to begin that same journey. India built the Bombay Stock Exchange Small and Medium Enterprises (BSE SME) and the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) for SMEs (Small and Medium- sized Enterprises) and startups (NSE Emerge) for exactly this purpose, and today hundreds of small enterprises have raised tens of millions of dollars through those platforms. Many migrate to the main boards once they outgrow the tier built for them.

Singapore built Catalist1 to catch its growth companies early and carry them toward regional scale. Jamaica now does the same, with the protections, sponsorship requirements, and governance standards that this market has had international professionals accept (Bloomberg, for instance) and JSE participants demand.

I want every entrepreneur in this room to understand that Jamaica is not benchmarking itself only against small island economies. We are benchmarking against the best, including Singapore, Dubai, and other advanced capital markets. Not to imitate them, but to match their standards in how efficiently capital flows to productive enterprise. Jamaica is fully capable of that.

What we need now is a cultural shift in how we work. We must move from a culture that tolerates inefficiency to one that demands very efficient productivity. And that efficient productivity must stretch across every inch of our private sector companies and into every cubicle and desk across every section of all of our government.

We must move from a culture of consumption to one of production and export. We must measure ourselves by what the world buys from us, not by what we import and buy from other countries. Our imports have far outweighed our exports relentlessly for over six decades of independence.

That higher export over import shift in mindset, more than just any single policy, will decide whether Jamaica becomes the investment destination, the logistics hub, and the service centre it has the capacity to be.

For this reason, I have just led the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce to establish the Manufacturing Sector Council, an accountability structure that brings JAMPRO, the Jamaica Customs Agency, the Companies Office of Jamaica, the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association, our financial institutions, and our MSME associations with one mandate: Remove obstacles to business and deliver measurable, positive and swift results.

The Council operates across five pillars and with five Working Groups: Finance and access to capital; Energy and cost competitiveness; Trade policy and market access; Skills and workforce; and Sector development. Each working group has a timeline and a target.

We are also building a sixth pillar. We are positioning this Ministry as a coordination point for real-time business data. We want business data in the USA, for example, contact is made with the USA Commerce Department and a plethora of accurate official data. Not so in Jamaica – or most anywhere else in the Caribbean.

We at the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce will be utilising the Companies Office of Jamaica (COJ), the Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC), and our financial partners, so that an MSME seeking financing, registration, or export support finds one efficient point of entry, not a maze of separate offices from which to secure first and vital information.

We intend for the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Jamaica’s Business Ministry, to function as the Caribbean’s commercial data centre, the way leading departments of commerce operate around the world. An ecosystem of efficiency, built for the entrepreneur.

This is what an even playing field looks like. Every micro and small enterprise, regardless of which parish it calls home or which bank manager it knows, deserves the same access to capital, mentorship, and markets as the largest companies listed on the main market. The JSE MicroMarket is a significant and important development to serve our micro enterprises.

Jamaica’s manufacturers, agro-processors, and small exporters are asking for the tools to compete, and today the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) has handed them one of the most important tools yet. I encourage our entrepreneurs to study these rules, prepare their governance, step forward and participate, and take advantage of this new JSE Micro Market. Sponsors and Mentors, please take this responsibility seriously, because the companies you support today are the big ones that will become profitable exporters which will carry the Jamaican brand tomorrow.

We are a small nation with great ambition. We are a small nation with great talent, purposeful grit, and a relentless will to build. What we have lacked is purposeful architecture and a broad ecosystem to turn that talent into scale. Today, the JSE gives us another piece of that architecture.

Conclusion

Jamaica is changing, and the government is building forward more efficiently and with a clear purpose to succeed. JOIN US on this NOBLE NATIONAL journey. Congratulations to the Jamaica Stock Exchange and its partners, and I look forward to watching the first cohort of Micro Market companies ring this market’s bell.