Comparing Jamaica to Singapore

This post was sparked by a Facebook friend posting a link to mapfight, a website that compares counties by their geographical size. I spent a few minutes idling around comparing Jamaica to a variety of countries such Japan, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands etc. Then came the bomb when I compared the size of Jamaica to Singapore which states that Jamaica is 15x bigger than Singapore. While I knew little about Singapore as a country I knew that they were an affluent country with strong economy that was lead by Lee Kuan Yew (I had to Google his name) for many decades.

Lee Kuan Yew

I remember learning that Mr Yew had used Jamaica as an economic model in the 1950’s and 60’s to plot out a path for his own country. Fast forward 50+ years and Jamaica and Singapore are in very different places economically. I did some searching and came upon the website nationmaster that compares countries on far more than just the size of their landmass. I’m no economist neither will I dive into the politics of it all but there is a story being told in the numbers.

Look at the numbers

GDP almost 20 times that of Jamaica, per capita GDP at almost 10 times. The Homicide rate per year per 100,000 inhabitants in Jamaica is 60 compared to 0.38 in Singapore! Here we have Singapore a tiny country with almost no natural resources pulling off an economic miracle while Jamaica a country “rich” in so many areas continues to frustratingly underperform. Who want to discuss with me why? drop me and email or tweet me @KelroyBrown.