THE Cayman Islands is to relax its visa requirements for Jamaicans travelling to the British territory in January.

The announcement was made Friday by Premier McKeeva Bush at the inaugural Northern Caribbean Conference on Economic Co-operation, hosted by Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS) in the tiny island.

"Visa exemptions will be put in place for Jamaican Nationals who hold validated US, UK or Canadian visas," Bush said in his opening remarks.

The changes, he added, were being made to improve his country's business environment.

"I can now tell you that a new one to five-day business visa will be introduced for business travellers visiting for legitimate business purposes," he explained. "In these instances, the business visa will replace the need for these persons obtaining temporary work permits for short trips to attend meetings or conferences."

Friday's conference was attended by approximately 160 government and private sector representatives from across the sub-region and focused on issues relating to Jamaica, the Bahamas, The Cayman Islands, Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who also addressed the conference, said the deliberations needed to focus on areas that offer opportunities that exist or can be created to ease the migration of skilled individuals.

"We have spent too much time struggling to compete with each other, instead of pooling our energies, and determining together, how we can compete with the rest of the world," Golding said.

"We have to make ourselves not just as good as the best, but slightly better, in order to attract investors," Golding added in reference to the competitive global environment.

Meanwhile, former Jamaican prime minister PJ Patterson lamented how Caribbean states had adopted what he described as some of the worst of the colonial practices.

"We have become or are becoming draconian in our trade and immigration practices (and) in some cases we are becoming more isolated linguistically," Patterson commented.

According to Patterson, sporadic attempts have been made to break the isolationist tendency, but none has been fully exploited. He, however, suggested that the attempts demonstrated an underlying desire to increase interaction and cooperation.

Also addressing the conference was JNBS General Manager Earl Jarrett, who urged regional leaders to take advantage of the "rich opportunities" that exist in the Northern Caribbean.