Yaneek Page | Resilience or ruin: the financial reckoning facing Jamaican entrepreneurs

After the clouds clear, the wind dies down, and the floodwaters retreat, the real reckoning begins.

This is not abstract or distant forecast. It is our neighbours hauling fallen trees and zinc from yards. It is farmers standing in stunned silence before flattened fields, and business-owners sweeping knee-high mud, rocks and silt, wondering how to ever start again.

It’s the sound of generators humming in the dark and people searching for signal just to say that they are alive. It is the weariness of a nation that did everything right, prepared with what they had, secured what they could, prayed unceasingly and still woke up to unimaginable loss.

Hurricane Melissa has left behind not just physical destruction, but an emotional and economic exhaustion that words can barely capture. Yet, beneath that grief, another truth is emerging, and it is a question every entrepreneur must now confront: How can we afford to keep doing this?

Note, the Atlantic now averages 20 named storms a year, which is nearly double the 1980-2010 norm. Preparation is routine, not rare.

It’s therefore no longer just about damage. It’s about the cost of survival and who bears it.

Up to 95 per cent of property in Jamaica is estimated to be uninsured according to ratings agency AM Best. Even more staggering is our disaster vulnerability. Jamaica is classified by the World Bank as the third-most exposed country in the world to multiple hazards, with over 96 per cent of the country’s GDP and population at risk from two or more hazards.

With our severe risk exposure and minimal coverage against storm damage, let us recount the ritual small businesses know by heart: close early, pay staff ahead of time, secure supplies and the inventory, protect equipment, buy fuel, board up the windows, and go home to pray that the storm weakens overnight, or shifts to avoid Jamaica.

Even if we have year where there is relief, there is never a refund. There is a massive cost to simply preparing, lost sales, broken momentum and sluggish restart. Hurricane season is half a year, and in a single year we can expect to face multiple threats from serious storms. This year, after Melissa, and only months after Beryl ravaged the island’s southwestern end, we’ve all come face-to-face with a reality that Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) accepted long ago: storm preparation is not a one-off expense. It’s a permanent line item.

Lessons from JPS’ ‘clinical’ cost recovery

Every time a storm threatens, JPS mobilises early: additional technical teams flown in, crews deployed, materials staged, restoration plans activated. When the winds calm, the company calculates the cost and finds a way to recover it, from the customers.

It’s a matter-of-fact and unabashed approach. Even when it goes down like bitter medicine, it holds a lesson: JPS can only continue service if it prices for resilience. It doesn’t wait to see destruction; it budgets for it.

Small businesses will need that discipline of looking at science and data, then planning, acting, and recovering, to stay afloat. MSMEs by contrast, usually try to absorb every dollar of loss. Unfortunately, many won’t recover this time. Long before landfall, estimates are that merchant sales across hurricane zones fall by about 12 per cent during preparation and recovery.

Remember, Hurricane Beryl caused an estimated $32.2 billion of losses. Melissa’s toll will be much greater. These are not just numbers. They represent every restaurant, office, salon, and factory that closed early, and every entrepreneur who lost a week’s revenue and still had to meet payroll.

Then there is what some call the ‘consumer sensitivity’ dilemma. We’ve already seen it on social media, where it is almost taboo to talk about pricing after a disaster. Of course, no one wants to seem cold in a time of national grief.

However, small businesses are facing existential threat, and acknowledging that reality after the storm is vital, because there are businesses that have not a red cent to pay staff in the next few weeks.

We can’t stand on some of the smallest shoulders and wait until they break. It’s time to follow utilities, insurers, and airlines routinely and factor volatility into our cost models. Small businesses as the backbone of the economy can’t suffer in silence.

Passing on a fair share of the cost of resilience is not greed, it’s honesty. Consumers benefit from businesses that can reopen, rehire, and restore stability. Sustainability is a public good.

Now, let’s be clear on what pricing for storms really means, because this isn’t about gouging. It’s building sustainability in your financial DNA and setting aside a resilience reserve. In practice, it might mean one to two per cent of sales monthly to cover payroll advances, stock and equipment, business interruption, protection, and reopening costs.

Every entrepreneur who shuttered their doors this week knows the feeling of fatigue, dread and even misery, and it’s a sacrifice that deserves acknowledgment. Resilience isn’t free. In this new Caribbean reality, endurance alone is not enough.

One love!

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