NEW YORK – The Jamaican flag was raised outside the New York Stock Exchange building to celebrate the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) and its excellent performance in recent years.
“As the world’s best performing stock exchange, the island’s main index outperformed all 94 international benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg [in 2018]”, said Caroline Hyde, the Business Anchor for Bloomberg TV.
Managing Director of the JSE, Marlene Street-Forrest was invited to discuss the major milestone with Bloomberg earlier today.
“It is really to do with the economy, you know that we are stable and persons are optimistic about Jamaica. The business people, the consumers, we’re optimistic about what is going on in Jamaica and over those couple of years (50). What we have been doing is encouraging Jamaican companies to do better in terms of their corporate governance, training etc. So we have been putting in the hard work for the companies to perform well and it is paying dividends,” Street-Forrest said.
“It (JSE) is growing very rapidly, which is why too we are here in New York and we were just in Canada because people are curious, people are seeing the results as shown by the index. But more so what is happening is that when you look on how the companies themselves are performing, they are performing well. There is the dividend payout, there is the stock price appreciation so overall we are doing pretty good,” Street-Forrest added.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness took to Twitter today to commend the JSE.
“This is a great achievement for our small island,” Holness tweeted.
The prime minister also noted that the JSE has performed “exceptionally well over the last year and was voted number #1 stock market in the world in 2018”.
The nod from the New York Stock Exchange comes just as Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke announced that Jamaica’s relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has officially come to an end. “This week, Jamaica formally graduates from a six and a half year programme engagement with the IMF. This is a Jamaican home-grown achievement, that has gained attention around the world and one that we must continue to build on”, he said via Twitter.
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