KINGSTON, Jamaica — Fresh trade data published by Jamaica’s official statistics agency has painted a stark picture of the country’s widening merchandise trade imbalance for the full calendar year 2025, revealing export earnings that fell far short of the value of goods brought into the country.
Released Friday by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, widely known as STATIN, the agency’s latest International Merchandise Trade briefing laid out the full scope of the 2025 trade position: Jamaica’s total import spending reached US$7.52 billion, while total export revenue hit just US$1.65 billion — a gap that leaves the island nation with one of its most lopsided trade balances in recent years.
When broken down, the data shows that for every dollar Jamaica spent importing goods in 2025, just 22 cents was generated through export sales. That marks a noticeable drop from 2024, when the ratio stood at 26 cents of export earnings for every dollar of imports, also called the export-to-import coverage ratio.
A closer look at year-over-year changes shows the imbalance is growing: total 2025 exports fell 13.4% compared to the US$1.91 billion recorded in 2024. STATIN attributes most of this decline to a steep 20.4% drop in the export value of crude materials excluding energy products.
On the import side, meanwhile, the total value of goods brought into Jamaica rose 3.2% year-over-year, climbing from US$7.29 billion in 2024 to the 2025 total. According to STATIN’s analysis, this uptick was driven by higher incoming shipments of two key categories: raw materials and intermediate goods, which rose 10.5%, and consumer goods, which saw a 6.2% annual increase.
The report also outlined Jamaica’s top trade relationships for 2025. The United States, China, Brazil, Japan, and Trinidad & Tobago remained the island’s five largest sources of imported goods. Combined, Jamaica spent US$4.68 billion on imports from these five markets in 2025, a 5% increase from the US$4.45 billion spent on imports from the same group in 2024.
For exports, the top five destination markets in 2025 were the United States, the Russian Federation, Iceland, Canada, and the Netherlands. However, total export revenue from these key markets dropped sharply by 20% year-over-year, falling to US$1.43 billion in 2025.