RICS Americas was honored to have the Prime Minister of Jamaica, the Honorable Orette Bruce Golding, give the opening remarks at the "Managing Risk, Maximizing Reward" conference in Montego Bay Jamaica on November 8.

Prime Minister Golding stressed, with the crowd, the need for Jamaica to cut its wasteful pending and transform their valuable land assets into wealth for the entire country.  He stated, "we have a situation in Jamaica where land has been misused and abused in a way that compromises the kind of planned development that we would want to practice and inhibits us in many respects in transforming the quality of life for people in Jamaica." He went on to announce an upcoming meeting with RICS Americas Board member Elizabeth Stair FRICS, Chief Executive of the National Land Agency to examine "how we can bring this valuable asset into transactional use so that it can be used as wealth and then be used to create more wealth."

The two day conference drew nearly 200 real estate professionals from Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and the United Kingdom.