标签： Jamaica

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica’s 11th Biennial Diaspora Conference is set to bring global attention to the island nation’s untapped creative economy potential, with sprint legend and global sports icon Shelly-Ann Fraser-Prycy stepping into the spotlight as a featured panel speaker. State Minister for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Alando Terrelonge has publicly hailed Fraser-Pryce’s participation, framing her involvement as a major boost to the conference’s core goal of turning Jamaica’s global cultural and athletic influence into tangible economic growth.

Per an official statement from the foreign affairs ministry, Fraser-Pryce will share her insights on the conference’s third day during the high-profile panel discussion titled “Leveraging the Creative Economy to Build Stronger Cultural Industries”. The session is designed to unpack actionable strategies Jamaica can deploy to better capitalize on its world-renowned cultural, athletic and creative assets. Discussion points will center on attracting cross-border investment, nurturing homegrown entrepreneurship, and building long-term economic resilience that insulates the country from global market volatility.

Fraser-Pryce will share the panel with a cohort of distinguished leaders across Jamaica’s creative and public sectors. Joining her are Olivia Grange, the country’s Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport; award-winning Jamaican film producer Storm Saulter; popular singer-songwriter Naomi Cowan; rising actress Kimberley Patterson; and Joe Bogdanovich, CEO of Downsound Entertainment and organizer of the iconic Reggae Sumfest. Together, the group will explore pathways to strengthen Jamaica’s cultural industries, expand the global footprint of “Brand Jamaica”, and unlock new, sustainable income opportunities for local creatives, athletes and entrepreneurs to capitalize on the nation’s massive international soft power.

Terrelonge emphasized that Jamaica’s unique global standing in culture, music, sports, film, fashion and creative talent gives the small island nation a competitive edge few similarly sized economies can match. “Our responsibility is to convert that global influence into enterprise, investment and sustainable economic opportunities for our people. The diaspora has a central role to play in that effort,” he explained in his remarks. The minister extended an open invitation to Jamaican communities living overseas and global investment partners to back opportunities within Brand Jamaica, supporting the development of industries, digital and physical platforms, and cross-sector partnerships that will propel Jamaica’s creative economy to new heights.

The global creative economy currently generates trillions of dollars in annual value and stands as one of the fastest-growing economic sectors worldwide, a fact Terrelonge highlighted to underscore the urgency of Jamaica’s efforts. He confirmed that the Jamaican government has prioritized advancing policy frameworks and targeted initiatives to strengthen the local creative industry ecosystem, recognizing the sector’s outsized role in driving economic diversification, creating new jobs for Jamaicans, empowering youth populations, fostering innovation, and preserving the nation’s rich cultural heritage.

Terrelonge also offered special recognition to the GraceKennedy Group, a legacy partner of the 11th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference. He praised the conglomerate for its decades-long commitment to driving national development and its consistent support for initiatives that engage the Jamaican diaspora in domestic growth efforts. “Their support in bringing Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce into this conversation adds one of Jamaica’s most influential global voices to a session focused on the future of the country’s cultural and creative economy,” Terrelonge noted.

Beyond the creative economy panel, the 11th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference functions as a cross-sector platform for collaboration, investment and innovation. It brings together Jamaicans from diaspora communities across the globe and international allies of the nation to co-design and advance initiatives that drive inclusive, long-term growth and development across Jamaica.

KINGSTON, JAMAICA – Jamaican pet food brand True Pet Food has kicked off its first ever exclusive industry gathering, the “Inner Circle” event, hosted at the iconic Sandals Dunn’s River resort. The invitation-only summit brought together a diverse cross-section of the brand’s ecosystem: top retail partners, authorized distributors, loyal customers, and in-house team members, all gathered around the central theme of “Impact” to align on the company’s upcoming expansion goals and strengthen collaborative ties across the supply chain.

In late May, automotive brand Omoda | Jaecoo brought its cutting-edge new hybrid models and proprietary powertrain technology to Santiago, Chile, marking an important milestone in its expansion across the Caribbean and Latin American (LATAM) regions.

Hosted across May 26 and 27, the LATAM Super Hybrid Experience invited automotive journalists from more than 15 regional markets to get firsthand behind-the-wheel experience with the brand’s new electrified offerings through a curated lineup of exclusive activities. Chile was selected as the host venue for a strategic reason: it was the brand’s first entry point into the LATAM market three years prior, and has since served as a stable base for its regional growth, executives explained.

Caesar Huang, Deputy General Manager for Omoda | Jaecoo’s LATAM Region, shared the brand’s outlook on electrification with the Jamaica Observer’s Auto magazine. “We see that hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid, and fully battery electric powertrains are the clear global trend – we’ve watched this shift unfold in China, across Europe, in Southeast Asia, and now it is taking hold across LATAM as well,” Huang said. Nicolas Pietrantoni, Commercial Director for Omoda | Jaecoo Chile, echoed this framing, noting that the event gave visiting regional journalists an opportunity to test vehicles and familiarize themselves with the brand’s new Super Hybrid System (SHS) before introducing the technology to consumers in their home markets.

The two core variants of SHS anchor the brand’s new electrified lineup: SHS-H, the standard hybrid configuration, and SHS-P, the plug-in hybrid option. Regardless of variant, the brand says models equipped with SHS deliver more than 1,000 kilometers of range on a single full tank of fuel. To validate this claim and let reporters experience real-world performance, the brand organized a cross-country fuel efficiency challenge following the initial press briefing. Journalists took the wheel of two preview models – the Omoda C5 SHS-H and Jaecoo J7 SHS-P – on a route that stretched from downtown Santiago through Chile’s rural wine country and back, putting both models through a mixed set of road and traffic conditions while efficiency data was tracked. A pair of Peruvian drivers, Enrique Pérez and Nicolás Orihuela, took top honors in the challenge.

On the event’s second day, the newly unveiled Omoda C7 joined the existing test fleet, giving journalists the chance to push all three models to their performance limits on a closed driving course. That evening, the brand made three models’ regional debuts official: the Omoda C5 SHS-H, Jaecoo J8 SHS-P, and Omoda C7 SHS-P. The Omoda C7 SHS-P will roll out to a limited number of regional markets initially, Huang confirmed.

All SHS-equipped models share a core powertrain architecture centered on a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder internal combustion engine paired with a dedicated hybrid transmission (DHT) that integrates dual electric motors. The full system delivers a combined 224 brake horsepower and 218 pound-feet of torque. The standard SHS-H hybrid uses a 1.83kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, while the SHS-P plug-in variant upgrades to a larger 18.4kWh LFP battery, adds 40kW external fast-charging capability, boosts total output, and includes standard all-wheel drive.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2024, Huang announced that the brand is preparing to launch another high-volume model, the Omoda 4, which was first unveiled in April at the Beijing Auto Show at the brand’s Wuhu, China headquarters. The new model will be launched in the second half of the year across the region, and will offer three powertrain options: traditional internal combustion, hybrid electric, and fully battery electric, with the variant lineup coming to Caribbean markets in the near future.

JMMB Group, the Caribbean-based financial services conglomerate, has released full-year results ending March 31, 2026 that paint a contradictory yet revealing picture of its 10-plus-year corporate transformation: overall shareholder profit plummeted 56 percent to $1.55 billion, even as core banking operations delivered robust double-digit growth and customer confidence surged across the region.

On paper, the mixed set of financial metrics appears contradictory: while headline profit dropped sharply, customers added $41.4 billion in new deposits to lift the group’s total deposit base to $267.8 billion, the overall loan portfolio expanded by $19.2 billion to hit $236.4 billion, and the banking segment’s operating contribution jumped 38 percent year-over-year to $6.24 billion. This disparity, however, is not a reporting anomaly—it is a clear reflection of the strategic shift JMMB has pursued for more than a decade, as it works to reduce its historic reliance on volatile investment-driven earnings.

Long known to Jamaican consumers as a specialist in fixed-income investments and securities brokerage, JMMB has steadily expanded beyond its original core business over the past 10 years, building out a full regional banking footprint across Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and most recently the Dominican Republic. Group leadership made the deliberate decision to diversify after identifying that overreliance on investment income left the business overly vulnerable to swings in global financial markets and shifting interest rate environments.

“We recognised that we needed diversification in earnings and that the investment business line is a little bit more subject to market movement and movement of interest rates and what we call market risk,” Group CEO Keith Duncan explained in an interview with local media.

The first major milestone of this transition came in 2012, when JMMB acquired Capital & Credit Financial Group to secure its first merchant banking license. Five years later, the group secured a full commercial banking charter, opening the door to widespread expansion of traditional deposit-taking and lending activities that generate more stable, recurring income. The 2025/26 fiscal year represented one of the first major stress tests of this long-term strategy, and the results have borne out the logic of the shift, Duncan said.

“When we started this journey, the objective was to build a more balanced business model where earnings would not be dependent on a single business line,” Duncan noted. “What you’re seeing now is the benefit of having multiple earnings streams contributing to the group.”

The latest results bear this out: while banking and related services delivered $6.24 billion in operating contribution, up from $4.51 billion in the prior year, JMMB’s legacy financial services segment—which encompasses securities brokering, investment management, and advisory services—recorded a $2.05 billion loss for the period. Banking not only outperformed all other business units; it effectively absorbed the losses from the investment division to keep the group solvent through a period of market volatility.

The sharp overall drop in headline shareholder profit can be traced largely to external factors outside JMMB’s core operating performance, specifically weaker results from Sagicor Financial Company, where JMMB holds a major stake. JMMB’s share of Sagicor’s profit fell to $1.01 billion, down from $2.84 billion in the prior year. While Sagicor’s core operating activities remained profitable, generating $25 billion in core earnings during the March quarter, broad volatility in U.S. and Canadian equity and bond markets pushed Sagicor to report a net attributable loss of $34.4 million for the period. As a major shareholder, JMMB is required to reflect its proportional share of Sagicor’s results in its own financial statements, pulling down the group’s overall bottom line.

Additional headwinds included lower trading gains from JMMB’s own securities activities, where net gains fell from $5.79 billion to $4.27 billion year-over-year, and $1.61 billion in provisions set aside to cover potential future losses on financial assets amid market uncertainty.

Despite the headline profit drop, Duncan emphasized that investors should prioritize the long-term structural shift in the group’s revenue mix over short-term bottom-line fluctuations. The banking division continues to gain market traction across the Caribbean, he noted, with net interest income—core profitability for most banks—climbing from $11.3 billion to $14.8 billion year-over-year. Foreign exchange trading gains also rose from $1.8 billion to $2.9 billion, driven largely by strong performance in Trinidad and Tobago, even as Jamaica’s market faced temporary disruption from Hurricane Melissa.

“The banking business continues to show strong momentum across the region,” Duncan said. “Those operations are providing a strong foundation for the group. What investors should really focus on in our numbers is the fact that we’re achieving greater and greater diversification of revenues.”

JMMB still retains a large exposure to financial markets: investment securities remain the group’s largest single asset category at $359.5 billion, and the company continues to offer investment management, wealth management, and securities trading services to clients across the region. But the 2025/26 results make clear how dramatically the group’s earnings profile has shifted over the past decade. A decade ago, a period of market volatility like this would have erased the group’s entire annual profit, driven by its near-total reliance on investment performance. Today, the growing banking division acts as a built-in stabilizer, cushioning the blow from market swings and laying the groundwork for more stable long-term growth.