Yaneek Page | 2026: A hard road ahead for small businesses

We can finally wave goodbye to the 2025 hurricane season but it may be 18 months or more before Jamaica can exhale, particularly now that the message is coming from two institutions responsible for monitoring the country’s economic pulse: the Planning Institute of Jamaica and the Bank of Jamaica.

For readers who don’t follow these institutions closely, here’s the simplest way to understand their roles.

The PIOJ tracks and analyses the performance of Jamaica’s real economy: production, growth, sector trends, employment, investment flows, and the factors influencing national development. Their reports show what is happening across key industries such as agriculture, tourism, mining, manufacturing, construction, services, and others.

The BOJ, on the other hand, manages the monetary side of the economy: inflation, interest rates, money supply, foreign exchange stability, and financial-system risk. Its decisions influence borrowing costs, price movements and overall financial conditions.

When both of these institutions shift their tone at the same time, and in the same direction, they are sounding a national alarm bell. Which is exactly what occurred last week, as both agencies confirmed what many of us suspected immediately after Melissa’s devastation – Jamaica is entering one of the most challenging economic periods since COVID-19.

The PIOJ’s latest assessment is devastating in its clarity: Jamaica’s economy is expected to contract by 11 to 13 per cent in the December 2025 quarter. Note this is the sharpest collapse since the pandemic, and a complete reversal of our growth trajectory.

To put this into perspective: just weeks before Hurricane Melissa, we were tracking 3.1 per cent growth for 2025; and the July-September quarter recorded 4.6 per cent year-on-year growth, thanks to strong performances in both goods (10 per cent) and services (3.0 per cent), marking a strong post-Hurricane Beryl recovery.

Adjusted reality

However, a single weather event has wiped out an entire year of economic gains, and set us way back. Agriculture and tourism are showing deep contractions, and the western parishes, critically affected, are far from stabilising. Indeed, ODPEM confirmed that, up to last week, none of the recovery funds or proceeds from the catastrophe bond had been spent.

For small business owners, especially those with limited retained earnings, this is not just high-level national data; it is your customer base shrinking, profit pressure rising, and the real economy tightening around you.

Yet, there is more. The BOJ’s message is equally serious, putting the country on notice that inflation will rise and stay high until 2027. In its latest policy rate decision, the central bank has kept the policy rate at 5.75 per cent, the same level before Melissa.

They made it clear we’re in an unstable environment which will see inflation rise above the 4 to 6 per cent target range because of severe supply shocks. We can expect food prices, utilities, transport, construction materials, and services to climb.

Currency pressures will intensify as imports surge for reconstruction, and the central bank is already deploying pre-emptive measures to maintain stability.

Before Melissa, Jamaica was on a path to recovery, and many voices in the business community were calling for rate cuts. That’s out the window for the foreseeable future, because the BOJ’s difficult job will be inflation containment.

Every business owner and manager must be clear that the PIOJ is telling you the economy is shrinking, and BOJ is telling you costs are rising. Those two forces together create the most difficult environment for small businesses which, for most sectors, will need to navigate falling revenue, rising expenses, expensive borrowing, foreign currency volatility, slower consumer spending, and more.

There is nothing typical about this downturn. We’re staving off a collapse of the real economy and facing monetary tightening and reconstruction demand all at once.

Post-disaster playbook

Understandably, this may be overwhelming. We’re entering a period that requires strong leadership, proactive planning, and serious organisational agility. In other words, you can’t just hustle harder. The playbook needs to look like this:

1. Costs will rise sharply, so prepare to adjust prices. If you wait and delay, you will bleed profit quietly for months. The new mindset must be survival via weekly reviews, aggressive negotiation, building buffers into your pricing.

2. Borrowing will become more expensive. Again, cash flow is king now. The BOJ cannot cut rates in a rising inflation environment, so loans, overdrafts, credit lines may increase and tighten

If you’re relying on borrowing to stay afloat, rethink that strategy immediately. You have to manage liquidity like the life of the business depends on it, because it does. Now is the time to reduce unnecessary expenses, tighten collections, shorten your cash cycle, monitor every dollar.

3. Unless you’re in reconstruction, construction, haulage, fast crops and other such areas in critical demand now, expect a weaker market for non-essentials especially. A 13 per cent quarterly contraction translates to household incomes are under pressure.

When families face higher food, transport, and utility bills, they cut spending sharply and immediately to balance their pockets. If you sell ‘wants’, refine your offer now. You have to pivot, diversify and deepen customer relationships even if your usual customer can’t buy.

4. Supply chains will be shaky as the physical damage is being repaired, well into 2027. It’s time to diversify suppliers, increase critical inventory where possible and as cash allows, and avoid one-source dependency.

5. Currency risk is real because reconstruction of the west means higher import demand and more pressure on the dollar. If you rely on anything imported, hedge where you can, buy ahead, renegotiate contracts and start forecasting your US-dollar needs. Watch the daily updates and stop pricing according to last month’s exchange rate.

6. Strategy beats hustle. In other words, hard work alone is not enough. The next 18 months require knowing daily numbers, protecting cash relentlessly, strengthening relationships suppliers, reducing bad debt and waste, cutting inefficiency and managing on evidence, not memory.

If you are operating as you did before October 28, 2025, this is your wake-up call.

One love!

Yaneek Page is the programme lead for Market Entry USA, and a certified trainer in entrepreneurship.yaneek.page@gmail.com