Jamaica is a Caribbean island nation with a population of 2.8m. Its prime minister is Andrew Holness, re-elected to a third term in September 2025.
Hurricane Melissa, a record-breaking category-five storm with 300kph winds, struck western Jamaica on October 28th 2025. It tied with Dorian in 2019 for the strongest hurricane landfall in the Caribbean and was described by the US National Hurricane Centre as "one of the most powerful hurricane landfalls on record in the Atlantic Basin". The storm passed west of Kingston, the capital, but devastated St Elizabeth parish, the island's breadbasket, which was still recovering from Hurricane Beryl, a category-four storm in 2024. Its five-metre storm surge and savage winds almost completely destroyed the historic town of Black River, one of the oldest colonial settlements on the island. At least nine people were killed. Three-quarters of the island lost electricity.
The storm's formation carried all the hallmarks of a hurricane supercharged by a hotter atmosphere. Sea-surface temperatures around the Caribbean were 1.4°C above average; according to one estimate, climate change made these high temperatures between 500 and 800 times more likely. Melissa underwent "extremely rapid intensification", with wind speeds rising by 113kph in 24 hours before accelerating further.
Jamaica received a $150m payout from a catastrophe bond issued in 2024. The bond's trigger was based on central atmospheric pressure dropping below a given threshold in at least one box of a grid of 19 layered over the island. In March 2025 the government had approved $192m in funds from the World Bank designed in part to improve disaster preparedness.
In 2024 a previous cat bond with worse terms failed to trigger after Hurricane Beryl, despite ticking one grid box. Caribbean finance ministers and environmental activists criticised the terms as unfair; investors warned that retroactive changes would only raise costs.
Jamaica successfully reduced its public debt from over 140% of GDP in 2013 to 62% in 2024, following an unusually popular IMF programme. The country maintains a "multilayered suite" of financial instruments for disaster preparedness, including credit facilities, insurance and catastrophe bonds. Research by the IMF suggests that hurricane-prone countries grow more slowly and are more indebted, as governments face both the cost of rebuilding and the loss of income from tourism.
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