On 5 February, IPA Secretary General, José Borghino delivered a keynote address at a conference at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, in Alexandria Egypt. The keynote was on the global publishing economy and José Borghino spoke about trends, challenges and opportunities in the Arabic-speaking markets of the Middle East and North Africa.
He stressed the fundamental importance of publishers having an accurate and comprehensive view of their global industry and how this has not yet been achieved. The IPA and WIPO have been exploring ways of rectifying the lack of dependable global publishing statistics. José Borghino’s presentation had the most impact when he revealed that when IPA and WIPO sent out calls for data around the world, no Arab country had responded. There were many reasons for this, the main one being that governments are not including publishing as part of their official statistics gathering programs.
IPA offers to work with any of its members to lobby their governments to change their minds.