Statin mulling BPO highlight
Published:Friday | August 10, 2018 | 12:00 AM
Director General of the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, Carol Coy, says despite the difficulties her organisation is looking at giving a special mention for the business process outsourcing sector when it reports on the economy.
At the same time Coy is tempering expectations that BPO will be stripped out and reported on as a sector in its own right. That call had come from president of the Business Process Industry Association of Jamaica, Gloria Henry.
Coy said at a Gleaner Editors' Forum that Statin is hampered by limited resources, but the greater difficulty related to the standards used to determine sectoral contribution to the economy. Each sector, she says, is regarded as an industry for statistical purposes, but BPO does not qualify because its activities overlap other sectors. The same, she added, was true for tourism.
"Tourism is based on the demand. So you can have a restaurant or a Burger King in Ocho Rios - how do you know how much of its business is tourism related?" Coy asked.
"Currently, we are revising our national accounts at Statin and what we hope to do is, for sectors such as these that are considered growth sectors, we will do a memo line item in the same way that we do for tourism about its contribution to GDP," Coy said regarding plans to start highlighting the BPO sector.