Durrant Pate/Contributor

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett is wooing Saudi investment support for Jamaica’s small and micro tourism enterprises, as the island continues to broaden its network of international partners committed to inclusive tourism growth.

To this end, Minister Bartlett last week held engagements with Saudi Eksab, an international investment entity that provides strategic capital needed to unlock the potential of frontier and emerging markets, exploring avenues for investment support targeted at Jamaica’s small and micro tourism enterprises.

The engagement forms part of Bartlett’s ongoing strategy to strengthen ties with Middle Eastern markets and investment partners and widen access to capital for local operators, including hotels, tour operators, craft vendors, and community tourism enterprises who form the backbone of Jamaica’s visitor economy.

Focus of investment cooperation

The preliminary discussions with the CEO of Saudi Eksab, Yazeed Saleh AIYahya, focused on potential financing instruments, technical assistance, or co-investment structures with an emphasis on ensuring that small tourism enterprises, often underserved by conventional financing, can access the capital and support needed to grow, modernise, and compete.

Minister Bartlett advised AIYahya that, “small and micro tourism enterprises account for a significant share of employment and entrepreneurship across Jamaica’s tourism sector. The Ministry has identified access to financing, technical capacity, and market linkages as priority areas in its ongoing efforts to ensure these businesses benefit directly from the island’s continued growth in visitor arrivals and earnings.”

Bartlett reported that the engagement with Saudi Eksab is aligned with his ministry’s First Strategy, which focuses on strengthening Jamaica’s domestic productive capacity, prioritising Jamaican suppliers and enabling local enterprises to retain a greater share of the value generated by tourism. 

“By connecting Eksab’s investment capital and technical expertise with Jamaica’s small and medium tourism enterprises, the initiative presents a practical opportunity to improve access to financing, accelerate business expansion and innovation, and position more Jamaican-owned enterprises to participate competitively in the tourism value chain,” the minister reasoned.

As these strategic discussions will continue, he said, the next steps are to execute a technical visit to Jamaica with senior Saudi Eksab officials to look at potential investment opportunities.

Saudi Eksab was established to build upon Saudi Arabia’s impressive history of supporting shared global prosperity by supporting emerging economies.