ROSE HALL, St James — A call from the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector to have some employees permanently work from home has been favourably received by Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte, but she has cautioned that there are legislative hurdles that will need to be cleared.

“Some countries in the region — Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Columbia — have moved to establish a work-at-home policy which gives a certain per cent of the business to be done remotely without affecting the benefits in the special economic zones (SEZ),” said Global Services Association of Jamaica (GSAJ) President Gloria Henry.

She was speaking at the GSAJ president’s breakfast forum in Montego Bay on Friday.

“That is what we are asking for, a ratio that allows us to continue to be compliant with the SEZ but still be able to be globally competitive with our peers in the region by having a percentage that does not impair our SEZ benefits,” Henry added.

Malahoo Forte indicated support of the request, in principle.

“Be assured that I will be right there beside you to help guide the Ministry of Finance and Public Service in rethinking the approach because, at the end of the day, we are committed to enabling industry,” the minister said.

“I hear you and that, more than anything, what you want is laws to enable you to continue to work at home. And I know immediately the implications because you are supposed to be operating in what was conceived as a particular space,” she said.

The Government would now need to execute a pivot of its own, she intimated, to grant the GSAJ’s request.

The issue, she noted, would be the definition of ‘a space’ and if it has to be physically confined, as now applies in the exclusive economic zone.

The legal and constitutional affairs minister said she is looking to hear the views of the GSAJ because “the concessions that you get under the tax front were conceived under a particular context, and Government will be challenged to rethink that concept because once it is prepared to give, then it will have to look at and be willing to make adjustments”.

Housed within SEZs, BPOs benefit from lower corporate income tax in addition to exemptions from tax on equipment brought into the country and general consumption taxes.

Up to 50 per cent of workers in companies within SEZs worked from home during the most challenging periods of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The GSAJ has disclosed that there has been a 17 per cent increase in productivity with work from home, adding that customers around the world are building “work at home” into their global strategies.

As a result, Henry said, her association is recommending that the work-at-home initiative — implemented by the Government in 2020 after the pandemic and which resulted in the temporary closure of some BPO work spaces — be made permanent.

The call was supported by programme director for the Global Services Sector Project, Marjorie Straw, who said the work-from-home policy had enabled the global services sector to rebound and contribute significantly to the economy of Jamaica. Working from home, Straw said, is the future.