“You need money, you can’t individually collect enough money to go out and market your own products by yourself. What we need to do is, we need to trod the pavements of Europe and North America. We need to create a virtual army of Jamaican representatives out there selling Jamaican products,” he emphasised.

Mr. Samuda explained that these persons would be sent to Europe to be the “eyes and ears” of the sectors, to be their sales representatives and to open doors for them.

The Minister stated that resources will be provided to assist the businesses with costs, such as travel expenses, to go into the market and to familiarise the market place with what they make.

Speaking in the 2008/09 Sectoral Debate at Gordon House in May last year, Mr. Samuda had said that JAMCo had been given a new mandate by Government, to facilitate the export of the goods and services produced by the small business sector.

He said that JAMCo was designed to be a service-oriented entity, which will facilitate small exporters, by providing information on what the market wants, linking local producers with overseas importers and assisting them, administratively, to export. “JAMCo will, therefore, be an export facilitation agency, working on the ground with the small exporters,” he explained.

The Jamaican Fashion and Apparel Cluster and the Authentic Jamaican Gift and Craft Cluster are two of five clusters managed by the Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC). They are part of the Cluster Sector Initiative component of the Private Sector Development Programme (PSDP), jointly funded by the Government and the European Union.

A cluster is a group of inter-related or inter-connected firms within and across industries that compete, but also co-operate and involve a number of entities such as specialised suppliers, service providers and support institutions. The ‘cluster approach’ encourages partnerships and collaboration of organisations working in complementary business areas.