Jamaica Paid for Its Newest Highway With Land, Not Cash. It Still Won’t Profit for 20 Years

• China Harbour fully financed the North-South Highway
• Jamaica paid with land instead of cash
• The operator earns $18M but spends $45M a year
• No profit expected for at least 20 years

Jamaica did not pay cash for the 66-kilometre North-South Highway connecting Caymanas to Mammee Bay. China Harbour Engineering Company fully financed the project under a 50-year concession agreement, with Jamaica compensating the developer by providing land for development instead, National Road Operating and Constructing Company CEO Ivan Anderson told Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee.

The arrangement has not been especially profitable for the developer either, according to Anderson’s own figures. The highway generates roughly US$18 million a year in toll revenue from about 12,000 vehicles daily, but that income is eaten away by US$30 million in annual debt-servicing costs and a further US$15 million in operating costs, a combined US$45 million against US$18 million coming in. Anderson told the committee profit is not expected to be realised on the highway for at least another 20 years.

That financial reality sits directly behind the toll increases motorists have repeatedly objected to since the highway opened. NROCC’s own position, repeated across successive rate applications, is that only two factors legally justify an increase under the concession agreement: US inflation and devaluation of the Jamaican dollar, not profitability targets or discretionary revenue goals. Rates have moved up in stages regardless, an 80 percent jump proposed for the Linstead-Moneague leg in 2015, a further 31 percent increase request in 2017, incremental $50-$100 adjustments taking effect in 2018, and another round of increases published in 2025, each one arriving against a backdrop the operator’s own numbers describe as a highway still two decades from turning a profit.

The land-for-financing structure also means the highway’s true cost to Jamaica does not show up in any toll receipt or government cash outlay. It is embedded instead in however much of that development land eventually gets built out, a cost that, unlike a straightforward loan, has no fixed repayment schedule and no public running total most Jamaicans checking a toll notice would ever see.

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