Jamaica Voluntary National Review 2022

The second Voluntary National Review (VNR) for Jamaica is prepared in the context of the greatest public health challenge the country and the world has faced occasioned by the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, resulting in a 9.9 per cent decline in GDP at the end of 2020 and an 11.2 per cent decline in government revenues for the 2020/2021 financial year.1 The Government of Jamaica (GOJ) implemented swift actions to address the fallout from the Pandemic, to promote recovery in the economy and in critical sectors such as education, and address the social costs to the most vulnerable via the largest fiscal stimulus – the GOJ’s ongoing COVID-19 Allocation of Resources for Employees Programme (CARE). The programme provided social and economic support through special grants and sub-programmes to approximately 440 000 persons, valued at $20 billion/US$129 million.2 

This report demonstrates continuity in action and purpose to implement the SDGs within the framework of Vision 2030 Jamaica and broadly considers the imperatives of the Decade of Action and Delivery for the SDGs, as the country pursues the achievement of the SDGs by the year 2030. Its scope reflects these imperatives through a multi-stakeholder approach that informed the review of progress against the goals since the 2018 VNR and examines critical entry points in localization and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to catalyse recovery and progress towards attaining the goals.