The other "90 miles away" nation

The United States is a mere 90 miles north of Cuba—a distance considered so short that it has been cited for over a century as the reason for the two nations’ intertwined destinies.

Jamaica, as fate would have it, lies just 90 miles south of Cuba. And surprisingly enough, Jamaica’s trade relationship with Cuba is also far below what one would predict from such proximate neighbors. The Jamaican Observer took a closer look yesterday at why that might be, and none of the reasons suggested, it should be noted, overlaps with the those the United States tends to give—namely, the communist regime running the island and the treatment of dissidents.

The Jamaican government’s promotional agency, Jamaica Trade and Invest (JTI), suggests that the cause is the language barrier (Spanish-English); local companies blame the difficulty in negotiating trade contracts (without a private sector, the difficult Cuban state bureaucracy is the only mode for negotiating trade and payments); and many others point to the U.S. trade embargo for pressuring Jamaica into limiting its trade relationship with Cuba. So Jamaica imports $16.7 million from Cuba but exports a mere $5.8 million every year. For comparison: Jamaica imports $225 million annually from the small Trinidad and Tobago; and U.S.-Jamaican annual bilateral trade is $2 billion.

The Caribbean nation’s entrepreneurs have the ability to supply what Cuba needs: the Jamaican Chamber of Commerce names telecommunications, tourism and agriprocessing as the sectors with the greatest potential for Jamaican businesses. Each of these sectors has huge, perhaps unprecedented, room for growth in the Cuban market—growth that could benefit Jamaican companies, with the right arrangements.

For reasons like this, Jamaica tends to support the lifting of the embargo.

Still, the Cuban market will only be opened to foreign companies if and when the Communist government chooses to do so, and it’s not clear when that might be.