LAST week when we wrote about future-proofing Jamaica, we spoke of data, digitalisation, indigenous knowledge, and the laws that must catch up with the storms we now face. We closed with a promise that licensing and certification, done properly, would come.

That promise stands. But eight months after Hurricane Melissa, with reconstruction money promised to now start moving through the system, the more urgent question is not only how Jamaica builds back better, it is who gets to do the building and whether the dollars spent on that work stay home or leave with the next flight out.

For the Construction Industry Council, that is not a rhetorical question. It is an economic one, and the answer has been sitting in plain sight for a long time: Every dollar spent with a Jamaican firm, a Jamaican tradesperson, a Jamaican supplier, is a dollar that gets spent again in Jamaica. These dollars mean money for wages, school fees, the corner shop, the next job and for rebuilding resiliently.