JAMAICA | Golding Demands 'Marshall Plan' for Hurricane-Crippled Small Businesses

Opposition Leader warns thousands of MSMEs across western and central Jamaica remain paralysed months after Hurricane Melissa — and says a contracting economy and undelivered support programmes are pushing them towards collapse.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — By Calvin G. Brown | July 16, 2026 - Leader of the Opposition Mark Golding has called for the urgent rollout of a Marshall Plan for micro, small and medium enterprises devastated by Hurricane Melissa, warning that thousands of businesses across western and central Jamaica remain crippled months after the catastrophic storm tore through the island.

Addressing the Small Business Association of Jamaica's (SBAJ) Growth and Resilience Conference 2026 at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in Kingston, Mr Golding painted a stark picture of an entrepreneurial class still trapped in Melissa's long shadow — shops, farms, workshops and service operators across much of Westmoreland, St Elizabeth, Hanover, St James and Trelawny, and even parts of Manchester, nursing lasting damage to their productive capacity while the national conversation has moved on.

"Many of these small businesses are uninsured. Many have suffered losses to their physical assets and their stock. They need help, and they need it fast."— Opposition Leader Mark Golding. 

A Recovery Colliding with a Contracting Economy

The Opposition Leader's demand lands at a moment when the macroeconomic ground is shifting beneath the feet of the very businesses trying to rebuild. Mr Golding warned that the MSME crisis is unfolding within a deteriorating economy, citing negative growth in the last quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, tax revenues running some $20 billion behind budget for the first two months of the current fiscal year, and May's point-to-point inflation of 6.7 per cent — above the target range being pursued by the Bank of Jamaica. Layered on top, he noted, are rising international energy and transportation costs driven by the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Europe.

"In a time of economic contraction, we cannot adopt a pro-cyclical approach to managing the economy. We have to be more creative. We have to be bolder," he said.

With the fiscal rules suspended for this fiscal year, Mr Golding argued, the Government has both the leeway and the responsibility to act decisively. The suspension — a rare loosening of Jamaica's celebrated fiscal discipline — was designed precisely for a moment like this, he contended. The question is whether the room it creates will be used for the small operators who need it most, or squandered.

Announcements Are Not Delivery

Mr Golding reserved some of his sharpest criticism for the gap between what is promised at podiums and what actually reaches shop counters. Headline announcements, he cautioned, are not enough — pointing to a recurring pattern of programmes in which billions of dollars budgeted for small business support have failed to reach the intended beneficiaries and were quietly returned to the Consolidated Fund.

It is an indictment that will resonate across the storm-battered parishes, where uninsured shopkeepers, farmers and tradespeople have watched relief programmes announced with fanfare only to find the application processes impenetrable, the disbursements slow, and the money — in the end — unspent.

Endorsing the SBAJ's description of small businesses as the bedrock of the Jamaican economy, Mr Golding called for a genuinely nurturing environment across the tax, registration, licensing and permitting systems, and for more granular work to ensure that announced policies actually have the desired impact on the ground.

"There are serious problems, and they must be addressed in a real way. If we do that attentively, working together, we can build a much stronger economy and a better Jamaica."

The Clock Is Ticking

The original Marshall Plan rebuilt a shattered post-war Europe through massive, deliberate and time-bound investment. Mr Golding's invocation of it is no rhetorical flourish: it is an argument that half-measures and recycled announcements will not restore the productive heart of western and central Jamaica. For the uninsured vendor in Savanna-la-Mar, the farmer in St Elizabeth's breadbasket and the small hotelier in Hanover, the arithmetic is unforgiving — every month without capital, stock and customers brings closure closer.

Whether the Government answers with a plan of matching ambition, or with another round of announcements destined for the Consolidated Fund, may well determine how many of Jamaica's small businesses survive to see the recovery they were promised.

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