The Honorable Andrew Holness, prime minister of Jamaica, will make his Penn Relays debut on the last day of the relay carnival being held at the University of Pennsylvania. While the Prime Minister will not lace up his spikes to take the track, he will join the Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment, and Sport, The Honorable Olivia “Babsy” Grange, as part of the strong Jamaican contingent supporting the island’s athletes.
Yesterday The Sports Minister posed with the winners of the country’s girls’ relay teams and was also seen helping a tired Hydel athlete off the track after their 4x100m relay victory.
According to word from the Embassy of Jamaica in Washington DC, the prime minister Andrew Holness is on a “Working visit to Philadelphia and New York.” The visit is organized by the Consulate General of Jamaica, New York, and the Consulate in Philadelphia and is part of a multifaceted agenda for deepened Diaspora relations.
The PM is expected to form strategic engagements with potential business and investment partners, especially with the thousands of nationals expected to attend the Penn Relays. The visit will also coincide with the launch of Jamaica’s 60th anniversary of independence in New York.
As part of Jamaica’s outreach to the diaspora, the government, through its investment promotions agency, JamPro, invested in a booth at the Penn Relays to promote Jamaican businesses and products.
JamPro has brought five companies from Jamaica that are part of their Export Max Program. According to Jackie Gayle, programs manager for export Max 3 at JamPro, the focus of Jamaica’s presence at the relays carnival is to expose these companies to the diaspora. “Our export max program is designed to help companies in Jamaica get into the export market and increase their distribution channels across the international markets. The diaspora is an important segment of our market focus, and The Penn Relays is a perfect meeting place,” she told CNW.
She hopes that the prime minister’s visit will bring greater visibility to these brands and help these companies with their export goals.
