Government should share some blame for a shortage of top-tier building contractors because it pays them late, the island’s main builders’ group said.

Richard Mullings, president of The Incorporated Masterbuilders Association of Jamaica, said many contractors are avoiding government work in favour of private projects, where they are paid on time. The association represents most of the island’s major builders and construction contractors. The Government, however, blamed an apparent lack of large contractors for slowing hurricane rebuilding.

“It is not straightforward to say that there are not enough grade-one contractors. That’s not a genuine reflection of the real issues in the marketplace,” Mullings told the Financial Gleaner.

He was responding to Education Minister Dana Morris-Dixon, who said last month that a shortage of grade-one contractors has slowed the reconstruction and repair of schools destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Melissa almost a year ago.

Mullings said some contractors are still waiting to be paid for repairs to schools damaged by Hurricane Beryl in July 2024.

“Let’s say you worked on a Beryl repair project and you don’t get paid, and Melissa comes and they are asking you to repair schools when the Beryl schools haven’t finished being paid off, it wouldn’t be rational to do that,” he said.

He said late payment by the government is a decades-old problem. “You could go through the history of contractors long before my time, and I doubt you’ll find any Jamaica contractor who will speak positively about the government’s adherence to the contract payment schedule,” Mullings said. He added that some government entities delay payment even when they hold warrants from the Ministry of Finance authorising it.

“There is a declining interest for [contractors] to invest in doing business for the government,” he said.

Not so, said Robert Morgan, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for works, when contacted by the Financial Gleaner. Most contractors are willing and interested in fulfilling government contracts, he said, though he gave no data.

Separately, Finance Minister Fayval Williams said at a conference in January that the Government was preparing a formal policy on receivables factoring, which lets contractors sell unpaid invoices to lenders for immediate cash. The move could ease the cash-flow strain caused by payment delays and improve the flow of money through the economy.

Mullings said he hopes that the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA), set up by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness to speed post-disaster rebuilding, will remove some obstacles to delivering government projects, though he said a long-term fix was needed.

“The status quo in terms of the bureaucracy and the inefficiency in getting projects from conceptual stage to actual implementation is costing the country too much, when you look at the inability to spend the capital budget in previous years,” he said. “Often, the contractors are scapegoated that the problem is with local capacity. But when you dig into the reasons, the Government can barely get their projects out the door within any reasonable timeframe.”

Jamaican public bodies reported 34,398 contract awards worth about $370.7 billion in the 2025-2026 financial year, according to figures presented by the Integrity Commission. It isn’t clear how much of that was for building and works contracts.

NaRRA was announced during the 2026-2027 Budget Debate as the Government’s vehicle for coordinating reconstruction, resilience-building and major infrastructure investments. At the time, Holness said the authority would have special powers to accelerate approvals and procurement.

Holness, at the recent launch of the Jamaica Reconstruction and Resilience Oversight Committee, JAMRROC, said that “the current procurement framework cannot support the speed and pace and enterprise that is required to deliver NaRRA projects.” JAMRROC will provide oversight for NaRRA.

For firms seeking reconstruction contracts, the proposed changes could affect how quickly projects move through approval stages and into execution.

luke.douglas@gleanerjm.com