Investment Deal with China Leaves Jamaicans With More Questions Than Answers

I AM SO FLABBERGASTED: WHO gives a FOREIGN government the RIGHT to CHOOSE WHICH LAND IT WANTS?

As part of an investment exchange, the Jamaican government has agreed to give 1,200 acres of land to the Chinese government – wherever it wants. Cucumber Juice has critical questions that she feels the government must answer: What is the value of the land? How will it be used? What if it's already occupied? She concludes that “Jamaica is for sale, is being sold, and is not at all as independent as its citizens and residents like to think.”

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  • This deal like others that have been struck with China State owned CHEC smacks of corruption at the highest level. CHEC’s parent company CCCC is banned by the World Bank until 2017 for charges of bribery. The World Bank also upheld that any of CCCC’s sister or parent companies are under the same ban.

    Some of the contracts/MOU’s that have been signed in other developing nations have been canceled due to the ban. Other countries are now reporting regretting signing development deals with CHEC/CCCC/China as these countries are not seeing the benefits promised & signed into the deals, mainly with jobs.

    So far Parliament has yet to ask the basic of all questions…Have they put all other investments and funding on the line for a package deal with China? Has China offered to buy up all Jamaica’s debt or a lions share of it? What does China get in return?

    CHEC/China has many of the same types of “buy in” MOU’s spread over the Caribbean island nations. Why so many like kind developments so close? Why so many in developing nations?
    Because China comes with a fat wallet to developing nations there is the concern that China will own these economies by shear investment and debt buying. They are not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, there has to be something they see of value in doing so. What is it?

    The global economy has not and will not recover to post 2008 levels. All economists over the world have said that. The world has only seen an increase of 1% over 2012-2013 figures in global demand. China’s once booming economy only saw an increase of 1.7%. The shipping industry also says that consumer demand is down and less shipments are being made. This calls into question the transshipping hub for Jamaica and its real purpose as well as the others that will dot the Caribbean.

    The proposed transshipping hub to be built in Jamaica’s largest legally protected area that is now being eyed by the government of Jamaica, along with the sweetheart deal that China/CHEC struck with the highway 2000 project and other ventures in Jamaica raise many more questions than do answers. There must be a demand by the people of Jamaica for Transparency, Oversight & Accountability. The government can no longer hide behind keeping these deals secret “in the interest of national economic security”.

    Corruption breeds in the dark…..Time to shed some light on it.

    Steven G. Smith
    President
    Peralto JADE Foundation

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