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Lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers are brac­ing for po­ten­tial fall­out af­ter a pow­er­ful cat­e­go­ry five hur­ri­cane struck Ja­maica, caus­ing wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion and rais­ing con­cerns about the con­ti­nu­ity of re­gion­al trade and busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Ramesh Ramdeen, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the full ex­tent of the dam­age is still be­ing as­sessed, with ear­ly re­ports in­di­cat­ing that in­fra­struc­ture and com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty may have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed.

“An as­sess­ment still needs to be done as to the im­pact of the hur­ri­cane on the Ja­maica’s in­fra­struc­ture. What we are told is that in some form or fash­ion, there will be neg­a­tive im­pact based on the hur­ri­cane...It is the most dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane that would have ever hit and there will be dev­as­ta­tion.