Every multi-million dollar government contract is an opportunity to grow Jamaican businesses. So when we award a nine-figure one, without requiring the winning provider to bring in small businesses, the country makes a deliberate decision to concentrate taxpayer money instead of using it to expand the economy.
Take the recent $790 million JamaicaEye awards for example. According to a gleaner According to a report last week, Sitewatch Electronic Security Limited was awarded a $439.4 million contract to supply and install 300 CCTV cameras and supporting infrastructure in Portmore. Separately, Konnexx Services Limited received $351.1 million for island-wide maintenance and related services. Both contracts were awarded through restricted bidding.
Expect much of the public debate to focus on surveillance, privacy and value for money. That seems fine to me.
However, Jamaica’s story cannot end there. Not when the country is simultaneously trying to recover from a devastating hurricane, generate stronger economic growth, manage the effects of high prices and deal with a growing rise in unemployment. These are precisely the conditions under which the government should ask how every dollar it spends can do more than just buy a good or service.
A $790 million acquisition also equates to $790 million in economic leverage. It is an opportunity to create jobs, develop skills, strengthen smaller Jamaican businesses and circulate public money more widely through the economy. We simply cannot afford to spend on this scale without asking who else can participate in the economic activity those taxpayer dollars create.
In fact, difficult economic conditions should make this issue more urgent, not less. When growth is slow and businesses and households are under pressure, public spending becomes one of the most powerful tools available to deliberately expand economic opportunity. It is therefore grossly inappropriate to ask only whether Jamaica needed the cameras or whether the contracts represented good value for money. We need to broaden our minds and our policies to ensure we extract the most economic value possible from spending nearly a billion dollars of public money.
Build small business capacity
To be clear, Jamaica has a procurement mechanism for small businesses. The Public Procurement (Reservation of Reserves) Order 2019 reserves 20 per cent of the total annual Government procurement budget for micro, small and medium enterprises.
What we do not appear to have is a systematic contract-level requirement that obliges major suppliers to include qualified MSMEs in major awards whenever scope allows.
Reserving smaller contracts for SMMEs is not at all the same as requiring smaller companies to participate in nine-figure contracts that generate expertise, technical capacity and serious business.
I want to be precise because it’s easy to misinterpret this as an accusation that something was left out. This is not a debate about security either. In fact, making the argument that “this is national security infrastructure and you can’t split up a surveillance contract to accommodate small vendors” is vague and inaccurate. The United States proves it every year.
The United States awards highly sensitive defense, national security, and classified systems jobs to small businesses that meet both applicable small business requirements and necessary security, cybersecurity, and facilities standards. Security and small business participation are not opposites, even in the most sensitive areas. In fact, the United States deliberately created a base of vetted suppliers so as not to have to switch from one to another.
Another objection to small business participation may be that local SMEs do not have the technical capacity. However, this is precisely the type of capability gap that America’s mentor-protégé, subcontractor, and joint venture structures are designed to close while expanding a vetted list of security service providers. The visionary principle is simple: limited capacity describes a present state, not an eternal state.
In the US government programs I worked on, where a target for small business participation was set, the primary supplier was required to contract with smaller companies in defined areas, such as wiring, civil works, site preparation, equipment installation and even routine maintenance, while maintaining responsibility for the technically demanding core.
Restricted competition still requires questions
The contract award notices confirm that both JamaicaEye contracts were awarded through restricted competitive bidding. Restricted tendering involves competition but within a limited field. That makes it even more important to understand how that field was selected and whether the process created any space for smaller Jamaican companies.
Public award notices identify contractors, contract values, contracting method, and award criteria. They do not indicate how many companies were invited, how many submitted bids, whether any were SMEs, or whether the selected suppliers committed to hiring smaller companies. The “proficiency level” field is also blank in both notices.
These omissions do not mean that the process was inadequate. They simply leave taxpayers unable to assess how much competition there was or whether small business participation was considered.
Restricted tendering may be fully justified for sensitive security infrastructure, but restricting the pool of lead bidders does not prevent the Government from examining each area for suitable subcontracting opportunities. It also does not prevent qualified smaller companies from being vetted in advance so they can participate in future security procurements.
The question remains: where in any of the $790 million awards was local business capacity deliberately created?
The California case
California has measured what happens when the government deliberately directs more of its procurement spending through small businesses, and the results are worth reviewing.
A 2024 state study found that for every $100 spent through certified small businesses, $68 stayed in California. When the same $100 was spent through larger businesses, only $48 remained in the state. That means spending through larger businesses retained about 29 percent less money in California than spending through certified small businesses. That difference is enormous when multiplied by billions of dollars in government procurement.
The broader economic impact was equally significant. Across the program, small business hiring generated approximately $5.9 billion in new economic activity and approximately 35,800 net new jobs annually.
California wasn’t just giving small businesses a piece of the pie. He strategically used procurement policy to make every public dollar work harder within his own economy.
The multiplier is a model that cannot be directly transferred to Jamaica, but the underlying finding remains important: more of the money spent through smaller businesses remained in the local economy.
When more of the government dollar stays local, it is converted into wages, supplier purchases, household spending, and tax revenue. The economy benefits the more times money changes hands locally.
It is up to us to ask the right questions so that the next $790 million contract can address:
What new local capacity will this spending generate?
How much of its value will circulate through Jamaican companies?
If small businesses are excluded, why?
a love,
Yaneek Page is the Market Entry USA program leader and certified entrepreneurship trainer.