MONTEGO BAY, St James — Business processing outsourcing (BPO) heavyweight Gloria Henry last Friday repeated her call, first made in 2018, for BPOs to be recognised as a separate sector of the economy.

In hammering home her point she noted that BPOs have contributed more than 57,000 jobs and each year generate close to a billion dollars in foreign exchange earnings.

“We are still not recognised as an industry. I was watching the PIOJ [Planning Institute of Jamaica] report last night and I was sad because they are still grouping us in services,” said Henry, who is director of the Global Services Association and The Port Authority of Jamaica’s vice-president of BPO and logistics.

She was speaking during the opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony for Omni Nearshore BPO company’s new home in Montego Bay. The company started operations in December 2020 and one year later grew to 85 employees from within the free zone’s BPO incubator. It has now grown its staff complement to 150 and is anticipating ending the year with 250 employees. The company’s new home is capable of accommodating up to 300 people.

It is performance like Omni’s which Henry cites when she speaks of the positive impact BPOs have had on the country’s economy.

Following Friday’s event she explained to the Jamaica Observer the importance of the sector being listed on its own.

“Certainly, it will help to strengthen our position. It will give us the respect that we need to get in the public space. It will help the public to better understand that this is an industry of success and is contributing to Jamaica,” she said.

Tourism, agriculture, and manufacturing have each been classified as separate industries.

“When they see us listed as a separate… sector… it will send a better signal to Jamaicans that this is an industry that is contributing to Jamaica’s GDP [gross domestic product],” added Henry.

Noting that the Statistical Institute of Jamaica had undertaken a survey commissioned by Jamaica Promotions Corporation (Jampro) that should have helped create a framework to report on the sector, Henry encouraged members to provide data when requested by various agencies.

“Everybody would have seen where we performed during the pandemic. So it is time [it was made a separate sector],” stated Henry.

One month after the first case of the novel coronavirus was recorded on the island, in March 2020, Prime Minister Andrew Holness ordered the closure of the BPO sector for 14 days. The decision followed the outbreak at an entity in Portmore, St Catherine.

The sector was resilient and later rebounded.

“We are pleased to acknowledge that the BPO and Global Services Sector (GSS) have played an integral part in Jamaica’s development — supporting employment and foreign exchange earnings through about 60 per cent of the period of this jubilee milestone that we are celebrating,” Henry said during Friday’s event.

“It’s good to note that many of the pioneers who are the bedrock of this industry are still with us almost four decades later. The first company is still in Jamaica, the first data entry, the first voice-enabled operator, the first local company [though acquired], the first receivables management company, and, of course, the first business park, the Montego Bay Free Zone,” she added.

Henry also saluted Mark Kerr-Jarrett’s Barnett Technology Park as the largest private sector development supporting the sector.