Robert Nesta Morgan | Peru’s post-disaster reconstruction experience: Lessons for Jamaica

In March, I led a Jamaican delegation to Lima, Peru, for a series of structured engagements with Peru’s National Infrastructure Authority and its former Reconstruction Authority. The purpose was to understand how a country can use a post-disaster moment not simply to rebuild but to strengthen its long-term capacity to deliver major infrastructure.

Peru’s experience is especially instructive because it was forged in genuine crisis. In early 2017, the country was struck by El Niño Costero, a coastal climate event that brought extraordinary rainfall, severe flooding, and mudslides. More than 1.5 million people were affected. Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged. Over 2,000 kilometres of main roads were lost along with almost 200 bridges. Schools and health facilities were devastated.

What made Peru’s experience especially sobering is that it was not an unprepared country. Yet even with serious disaster planning, it was overwhelmed. That reality shaped the response that followed. Peru concluded that recovery could not be limited to repairing what had been broken. It had to become an opportunity to build stronger infrastructure, improve public systems, and permanently upgrade national delivery capacity.

That thinking led to the creation of the Authority for Reconstruction with Changes, or ARCC. The phrase “with changes” was deliberate. This was not meant to be a patching exercise. It was meant to rebuild better, faster, and to a higher standard.

Peru then took a second important step. In 2020, through a Government-to-Government agreement with the United Kingdom, it brought in a UK Delivery Team made up of Arup, Mace, and Gleeds. This was not a conventional consultancy model. The team worked embedded within the reconstruction authority, providing hands-on support in programme management, procurement, design assurance, and knowledge transfer.

The results were significant. Procurement timelines that had previously taken a year were reduced to a matter of months. Market confidence increased dramatically. The reconstruction authority became, by independent assessment, the best-performing government body in Peru. Just as important, the partnership was designed around capability transfer, not dependency. The goal was not for Peru to rely on outsiders indefinitely but to emerge from the process better able to manage major infrastructure programmes on its own.

LESSON MATTERS

That lesson matters for Jamaica. International partnership is most valuable when it strengthens sovereign delivery capacity rather than replaces it.

ARCC itself was designed as a temporary authority. But the systems, standards, and expertise it developed proved too valuable to lose. Peru, therefore, created ANIN, the National Infrastructure Authority, as a permanent institution to carry forward that capability. In other words, what began as an emergency response became a standing vehicle for national infrastructure delivery.

That is particularly relevant for Jamaica. Our proposed National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority, NaRRA, has also been conceived as a limited-life body. Its value, however, is not only in the projects it may deliver directly. Its deeper purpose is to prove that Jamaica can execute major programmes differently, with stronger preparation, faster coordination, better procurement, and clearer accountability.

This is why the prime minister’s contribution to the 2026 Budget Debate deserves to be understood as more than a list of announcements. It set out a coherent national development vision that links reconstruction, growth, resilience, logistics, urban renewal, and human capital into one framework.

The ambition is wide-ranging: rebuilding roads, bridges and public buildings to higher standards in areas affected by Hurricane Melissa; creating STEAM schools to prepare Jamaicans for a changing global economy; renewing blighted urban areas; expanding Kingston’s logistics capacity; transforming Montego Bay’s coastal corridor; rehabilitating Sandy Gully to reduce flood risk; and creating a faster pathway for strategic investment.

But ambition without execution is only aspiration.

NaRRA

NaRRA is intended as a direct response to that execution deficit. It is meant to serve as a centre of technical excellence, a single point of coordination, and a mechanism for accelerating preparation and delivery while preserving accountability. Its oversight structure is designed to ensure credibility and transparency because speed without trust is not sustainable.

Our visit to Peru made these lessons more concrete. Reconstruction works best when it is treated as a governed national mission, not a loose collection of projects. It works best when international partnerships are structured around knowledge transfer. It works best when crisis is used not only to restore what was lost but to build better systems for the future.

Jamaica is not Peru. Our circumstances differ in scale, geography, fiscal context, and institutional culture. What is transferable is not a template but a discipline: invest in preparation before construction begins; build systems that cut across agency silos; use procurement to improve delivery, not merely to award contracts; and hold institutions accountable for outcomes, not just procedure.

These are the disciplines NaRRA is designed to embed. If they take hold, the authority’s legacy will extend well beyond its formal life. The real measure of success will not simply be how many projects are completed but whether Jamaica’s capacity to deliver large projects is fundamentally improved.

Jamaica enters this period with real strengths: hard-won macroeconomic stability, growing confidence from international partners, and a clearer national development direction than we have seen in many years. Peru’s experience shows what is possible when a country chooses to treat disaster not only as a setback but as the moment to become better organised, more resilient, and more capable.

That is the choice before Jamaica now. The vision is clear. The financing is coming into place. The institutional mechanism is being built. What remains is execution. And with the right structures, the right discipline, and the will to hold ourselves to account, Jamaica is capable of delivering it.

Robert Nesta Morgan is the minister with responsibility for works in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.