Concerns have been raised that developers are losing billions of dollars due to the 12-month period it takes for the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) to approve development projects.

The 12-month period conflicts with a 90-day target that was agreed to more than three years ago.

"There are projects running into billions of dollars in many parish councils," said Reynald Scott, chairman of the Jamaica Developers Association (JDA), during a luncheon held at the offices of the Incorporated Masterbuilders' Association of Jamaica (IMAJ) in New Kingston on Wednesday.

"This situation does not speak well for our country's future, as we struggle to find the stimuli and catalyst for economic growth and development."

Consultative process

Mr. Scott called for an immediate restart of the consultative process among participants to get the 90-day approval objective back on track.

He said that when the issue of the approval process, which has to go through 14 government agencies, was raised on March 23, 2003, then head of NEPA, Franklin McDonald, had given an assurance that the agency was revising various plans governing the approval system.

The new refurbished settings would allow files to be processed electronically but, despite this, Mr. Scott said, there has been no reduction in the time taken for building permits and licences to be granted.

For his part Dr. Leary Myers, recently appointed head of NEPA, insisted that a 90-day approval timeline is not possible.

"This 90-day timeline is clearly not sufficient for complex applications," Dr. Myers said. "Applications that require an environmental impact assessment, it is almost impossible to do that, we cannot do it that way, we cannot do it in 90 days, we require a number of agencies to comment on these things and it is just not possible."

He added that NEPA is now in the process of moving away from paper-based processing and is using an electronic method called AMANDA.