Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness says the gov­ern­ment in­tends to have Ja­maica es­tab­lished as a leader in lo­gis­tics and man­u­fac­tur­ing, as well as an in­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion.

“Near­ly five decades ago, the Garmex Free Zone was es­tab­lished… and since then, it has been the cor­ner­stone of in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment in Ja­maica. It has be­come a cat­a­lyst for job cre­ation, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the 1980s and ear­ly 90s, em­ploy­ing at its peak, over 12,000 Ja­maicans,” Hol­ness said at the of­fi­cial open­ing of the first phase of the Garmex Free Zone Re­de­vel­op­ment and Ex­pan­sion project.

The project, which is ful­ly fund­ed by the Fac­to­ries Cor­po­ra­tion of Ja­maica Lim­it­ed (FCJ), is aimed at pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al space for man­u­fac­tur­ing, lo­gis­tics, ware­hous­ing, among oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.