Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter

Dr. Trevor Hamilton, president of the Trevor Hamilton and Associates Centre for Excellence, has declared that Jamaica will have to focus on the provision of services in order to take full advantage of the opportunities provided by the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).

Mr. Hamilton was speaking at a public forum on the CSME, organised by the University Council of Jamaica, as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations.

"The future is not in commodities; you can forget that. The future is in services," he asserted.

Dr. Hamilton, who was among a group of three panellists who participated in the forum, held at the University of Technology (UTech) on Tuesday night, said this would require a new attitude towards services.

Lack of preparedness

He cited the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup as evidence of Jamaica's lack of preparedness to capitalise on the opportunities that the event presents.

According to Dr. Hamilton, the region has to be importing services, valued at billions of dollars, to host the event. These services he said included cooling containers for beers and portable toilets.

Furthermore, he said, Jamaica needed to depart from traditional university training and focus on skills training.

"While we may have the bachelor's degree, we need to recognise that despite going to UWI (the University of the West Indies) or UTech ... we need to have a significant vocational system where we can step down from our Ph.Ds. and learn interior decorating and go and sell it; our Ph.D. will help us to sell it better."

Accordingly, he said, the country needed to be prepared in the area of training. "Prosperity in CARICOM is not going to guarantee any job to anybody if you are not prepared with the right level of competencies," he said.

Policies need to be ready

Dr. Hamilton said the country's policies also have to be ready and strategic enough to allow the country's people to take advantage of opportunities locally and in CARICOM.

Agreeing with Dr. Hamilton that services was the way forward, Dr. André Gordon, former president of the Jamaica Exporters' Association (JEA), predicted that services were going to be the most important component of economic performance in the future.

"Those of you here who are educated or who are in the process of being educated are gaining the most important weapon in your armoury if you want to take advantage of the CSME," he said.

He was, however, quick to point out that services only had value if they were linked to goods.

"The production of goods will always remain the basis on which services flourish and we must not lose sight of that," he said.