Holness accepts ESRI award as Jamaica expands GIS, housing and MSME drive

Prime Minister Dr. Andrew Holness is in San Diego, California, to accept the 2026 ESRI President’s Award on behalf of the Jamaican government for building an integrated national geospatial system and applying geographic information systems to public planning and evidence-based decisions. The honour is being presented at the Environmental Systems Research Institute user conference, which runs from July 13 to 17, 2026.

Addressing an executive insights session, Dr. Holness said GIS is indispensable for developing countries and cited its use in crime-fighting, land titling and settlements, forest management, and the response to Hurricane Melissa. Roughly 80 per cent of Jamaicans live near the coast, he noted, while hurricanes and rising seas approach from the shore. Towns sit in flood plains that should never have been settled there, he argued, so Jamaica will need spatial intelligence over the next century to reorganise the built environment. Geography, he said, is the country’s greatest asset and warrants heavy GIS investment.

A separate 12-month MSME procurement integration project, launched at the Iberostar Hotel in St. James, aims to help micro, small and medium-sized firms win government contracts and support broader growth. The Public Procurement Commission is delivering it with the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce, the Development Bank of Jamaica and other partners. Procurement readiness boot camps teach how government buying works, how to register as a supplier, how to strengthen financial readiness and how to submit competitive bids. The finance minister said a contract is only the start of a wider economic chain—more materials, workers, machinery, taxes and local spending—that can also ease bank lending and encourage younger entrepreneurs.

At Kingston’s 12th Christmas in July trade show last Thursday, Industry, Investment and Commerce Minister Senator Aubyn Hill urged producers to look beyond Jamaica’s three million consumers toward export demand in places such as Bogotá, Lagos, Nairobi, Singapore, Miami, Atlanta and New York. With Brand Jamaica already strong abroad, he said firms must convert goodwill into repeat export contracts and long-term buyer ties for goods and high-value services, beginning with formal registration.

Urban Development Corporation board chairman Norman Brown said the agency will build more than 20,000 homes on UDC land to help close an estimated national shortfall of about 125,000 units, spanning Kingston, St. Catherine, St. Elizabeth and St. Ann and supporting southwest Jamaica’s rebuilding, from affordable to higher-income stock.

Education Minister Dr. Dana Morris Dixon announced that a new special education diagnostic centre will open in Portland in September so families in Portland and St. Mary need not travel to Kingston for assessments. Facilities already operate at Church Teachers’ College in Manchester and Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College in St. James, with scholarships planned to staff centres in educational and clinical psychology, speech therapy, occupational therapy and related care.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security also reminded the public that authorised overseas farm and hospitality placements in Canada and the United States involve no recruitment fees and are never handled through social media, while health authorities continue urging Jamaicans to read nutrition facts labels amid high non-communicable disease mortality.