BlackBritain:
Around 391,000 Jamaican people owned businesses last year making Jamaicans among ‘the most entrepreneurial in the world.’ The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor - GEM was launched by Minister of Industry, Technology, Energy and Commerce, Phillip Paulwell (photo), who said:
‘Jamaica has one of the highest levels of entrepreneurial activity as measured by the Total Early Stage Entrepreneurial Activity - TEA with approximately 17% of the adult population, at the time of the compilation of the report, actively planning or recently established a new business.’
The TEA index is a measure of the extent of small business activity in a single country. According to the document, for which compilers spoke to some 3,000 small business entrepreneurs and 36 established owners, Jamaica compares favourably with countries such as New Zealand considered among ‘the world’s entrepreneurial countries.’ This shows that entrepreneurs in ‘middle income’ nations like Jamaica are beginning to compete with their peers in more advanced economies by tapping into facilities - including an island-wide small business incubator project - made available to Jamaicans just a year ago.
‘This is good news for Jamaica and we have to continue to place tremendous focus in this area, because if we are going to create wealth it is about entrepreneurship,’ said Paulwell.
The report maintains that Jamaicans are innately creative, finding shrewd but legal means of funding business start ups – including pooling resources, forging partnerships with international business chains, or simply selling food or clothing out of the back of cars.
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