Updated October 2026. October 2026: sample size, venue, and slide figures taken from the 2013 highlights PDF; financing context from a PIOJ terms of reference.
Balcostics prepared a short survey of firms attending the NCB/IDB SME Conference. The blog described it as work in partnership with the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica. The sponsors named on the post were National Commercial Bank Jamaica and the Inter-American Development Bank. The highlights deck is Jamaica SMEs Survey Report: Highlights, prepared by Balcostics Ltd.
Who was interviewed
Fieldwork ran from 21 to 23 June 2013 at the Hilton Rose Hall Resort in Montego Bay. The blog's "Hilton Resort and Spa" is the same property. About 130 operators of small and medium firms were there. The team tried to interview all of them and completed 87 questionnaires. Read every percentage below as a share of those 87 conference participants, unless the slide says people could tick more than one answer. This was not a sample of all Jamaican firms.
The participants
Men were 53% and women 47%.
The smallest age groups were 19 to 24 years (2%) and 60 years and over (3%). The largest were 35 to 39 (20%) and 45 to 49 (18%).
On schooling, 40% had a first degree, 23% a master's, 17% a diploma, 14% high school, 5% a PhD, and 1% primary school. The deck's sentence "almost two in every ten" had a master's does not match the 23% on the same chart, so the chart is used here.
Most of the firms were not new. 39% had been operating for 9 years or more, 22% for 1 to 2 years, 21% for 3 to 5 years, and 18% for 6 to 8 years. 24% had taken part in an incubator or a small-business association. 76% had not.
Why they started, and how they rated the business
The two most common main reasons for starting were a personal goal to own a company (35%) and a market opportunity they thought they could fill (34%). Freedom of owning a business was 16%, the possibility of financial reward 8%, providing employment 1%, and other 5%.
Support from family, friends, and colleagues was rated high by 47%, average by 45%, and low by 8%.
On meeting their own targets, 7% said they were unsuccessful on most goals, 67% said they were reaching some targets and had room to improve, and 26% said they were successful on most goals.
Challenges and finance
The challenges slide labels these shares: access to financing 50%, government policies 15%, administrative procedures 11%, limited workforce 8%, marketing 2%, economic environment 2%. The 2013 blog named the first three and "limited workforce" without the 8%. The labelled shares add to 88%, so the slide is not a full 100% split. They are printed as labelled.
94% said more financing would help them expand. 6% said it would not. Of the uses they named, the top five on the deck were more equipment (30%), new products (14%), more locations (14%), more staff (9%), and more marketing (9%).
Social media in 2013
People could choose more than one channel. Facebook 74%, LinkedIn 45%, Twitter 33%, Google+ 21%, Foursquare 7%. 22% said they did not use social media in the business. Google shut the consumer version of Google+ in 2019 (Google's notice). Twitter is now X. Those 2013 shares are a record of that conference, not a current media plan.
How to read it in 2026
Access to finance was the leading answer in this room. It is not a national rate. A later Planning Institute terms of reference for revising the MSME and entrepreneurship policy still lists "lack of access to appropriate financing" among the constraints on the sector, and it puts informality at an estimated 94% of Jamaican MSMEs, especially micro firms. That document reports implementation status as at June 2022. See the PIOJ terms of reference.
Updated October 2026
- Sample, venue, and the figures above are taken from the 2013 highlights PDF. The blog had omitted the 87 completes and the 8% workforce share.
- The master's line in the deck ("almost two in every ten") is replaced with the chart's 23%. The challenge shares are reported as labelled because they do not sum to 100.
- Google+ is marked as closed. Current finance context is the PIOJ MSME policy terms of reference (informality estimate 94%; status as at June 2022), not a new Balcostics survey.