For every US dollar Jamaica earned from merchandise exports in 2025, it spent approximately US$4.55 on imports. Tourism and remittances keep the wider structure standing. But behind the attractive façade is an economy increasingly dependent on things made somewhere else.

Jamaica’s law of adverse possession, rooted in the Limitation of Actions Act of 1881, allows a person who has occupied someone else’s land openly and continuously for 12 years to claim legal title. A renewed public debate in September 2026 is asking whether a colonial-era framework still serves a modern nation — and what the answer means for property owners across the island.

More than 40,000 housing solutions are in development across Jamaica, over 10,700 are under active construction, and the National Housing Trust is planning to begin a further 10,675 this financial year. A post-hurricane national reconstruction programme is now running on top of all of that. The construction sector is under pressure, and the costs may not stay contained.

Relocating Coopers Pen residents helps 99 people. A Gleaner editorial argues Jamaica’s real squatting crisis, up to a third of the population, needs the kind of cross-party commitment no government has sustained in 50 years.

Fayval Williams has invited public-sector unions to discuss reinstating a legal cap on the wage bill as a share of GDP, repealed in 2023 without a replacement.

The Bank of England has held its benchmark interest rate at 3.75 per cent for…