Foreign Affairs Minister Kamina Johnson Smith says Prime Minister Andrew Holness was truthful when he told the nation on Friday that his administration did not reject the United Kingdom’s offer to help build a prison here.

But on January 13, 2017, that's almost a year after Holness became prime minister, Johnson Smith told the Jamaican Senate that the government rejected the offer because the terms were “not beneficial to Jamaica as a whole” and that the matter was closed.

IN PHOTO: In this September 30, 2015 file photo, then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller introduces then Opposition Leader Andrew Holness to David Cameron, then prime minister of the United Kingdom, on his arrival to the island.

In media appearances, Johnson Smith reiterated the position of the Holness administration, including on Television Jamaica’s Smile Jamaica morning programme on January 16, 2017.

On his visit to Kingston in September 2015, UK Prime Minister David Cameron made the controversial prison offer to Jamaica.