I read in the Financial Gleaner last week that American businessman Stephen Hill suggested that Jamaica power down its manufacturing plants and focus on sectors in which it has a comparative advantage.

He makes these assertions based on critical factors which he said works to Jamaica's disadvantage; factors that include the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that was created to remove trade barriers, which has effectively worked against Jamaica.

High energy costs, inefficient bureaucracy, high labour costs and low productivity are factors that, he said makes Jamaica a loser in the international marketplace. Jamaican goods, he suggested, just can't compete with imported goods that are both cheaper and available in larger quantities.

He says Jamaica's future lies with tourism, agriculture and services.

On the surface, Hill, the CEO of the Caribbean International Network based in New York, seems to be right on target with his assumptions.

However, as a proud Jamaican, I am going to have to disagree with him. Right off the bat, the fact is there are companies here that already debunk his theories.

Several companies, GraceKennedy, Trade Winds, Appleton, Red Stripe, and many others, are very successful.

These companies have found creative ways to not just survive, but thrive in the very competitive marketplace, and in doing so, created thousands of jobs.

Now imagine if, say, Trade Winds, that produces Tru-Juice, Freshh and some of those other drinks on the market, or even Grace - a company that has expanded its operations in recent times to include packaging local vegetables for sale on the local and international market - were functioning in a more business-friendly environment, how many more people would they have been able to employ?

If we removed all those ridiculous policies that governed the way business is done in Jamaica and replace them with those that help manufacturing, these companies could perhaps hire even more Jamaicans.

If they hire more Jamaicans, more people's livelihood would be more directly invested in the success of the companies for which they work.

If that was the case do you honestly believe we would have a problem buying Jamaican over an imported product? If a man knows that if every time he buys a Jamaican product at a competitive price he puts more Jamaicans to work, don't you think he will buy Jamaican even more than he normally does. That would be the way to push a 'Buy Jamaican' campaign.

let me go back a bit and look at some of the things that make manufacturing difficult in Jamaica - high energy costs, high labour costs and bureaucracy. Right off the bat, we can fix two of those problems. We can fix the bureaucracy right now, as well as the ridiculous taxes that manufacturers face.

We can also control the labour costs. The way I see it, a man without a job would rather work for a percentage of what he would normally get, as opposed to not getting a pay cheque at the end of the month.

Over the long term, our energy costs can be fixed. Jamaicans are very creative people and can find ways around the challenges we now face, most of which are challenges of our own doing.

Once we fix those issues we can augment them with the additional development of tourism and agriculture etc. that Mr. Hill mentioned.

We don't need to shut down manufacturing in Jamaica. What we need is to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. If we can do that then Jamaica can be competitive and hold its own in the global marketplace.