The Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) has reported that a rebound in the Manufacture industry helped to spur growth during the July to September 2015 period. Addressing this morning’s Quarterly Press Briefing, PIOJ Director General, Colin Bullock said real GDP grew by an estimated 1.5 per cent, reflecting increases of 4.4 per cent in the Goods Producing and 0.6 per cent in the Services Industries.

According to the Director General implementation of major growth inducing projects will continue to favourably impact economic performance. He says within the Goods Producing Industry, increases were recorded for Manufacture up 9.7 per cent, Agriculture up 3.3 per cent and Construction up 0.8 per cent. Mining & Quarrying recorded a decrease of 1.0 per cent over the corresponding period of 2014. In the area of Services all industries showed increases, with the exception of Producers of Government Services, down 0.2 per cent.

Bullock says there were also improvements within the Labour Market based on STATIN’s Labour Force Survey for July 2015. He says there was an increase in the total employed labour force by 23,200 persons to 1,147,500 compared with July last year. The total unemployed labour force was 173 000 persons, a decline of 6300 persons compared with July 2014.

The Director General says short term prospects for the October to December 2015 quarter remain positive with real GDP expected to grow within the range of 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent vis-a-vis the corresponding period last year.

Governance, Social and Environment Indicators
Meanwhile, under the Vision 2030 Jamaica, marginal improvement was seen in Labour Force Quality where an average of 26.3 per cent of the total labour force had vocational or professional certification, based on the quarterly labour force survey for July 2015. This represented an increase of 0.4 percentage point from 25.9 per cent in the July 2014 survey. In terms of Security Status, overall crime rates continue to trend downwards for the fifth consecutive year. And according to the PIOJ Head, a total of 215 Category 1 Crimes per 100 000 population were committed over the January to September 2015 period, showing a decline of 10.3 per cent from 239 per 100 000 population over the similar period in 2014. However, he reports that murder rates trended upwards during the period with 33.9 murders per 100 000 population being committed, up 25.6 per cent, over the similar period in 2014.