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THE
Philippines has urged European private investors to
engage in the booming business-process outsourcing (BPO)
in the Philippines, citing the growing number of
available Filipino talents capable to perform emerging
business demands.
Foreign
Undersecretary for International Economic Affairs Edsel
Custodio said the steady growth in the BPO services is
expected to increase in terms of manpower and available
infrastructure being developed as BPO industry emerging
centers.
“The
challenge is the current state to beef up our manpower
resources, quality certification and security
compliance, which are all being addressed and in the
final stages of implementation,” said Custodio in his
speech at the Asia-Pacific Week recently held in Berlin,
Germany.
In his
forecast presented during the forum, Custodio said the
number of human resource for BPO services in the
Philippines is expected to increase from the current
237,175 to 920,764 in 2010.
He said
European countries have developed technology, designs
and have various education institutions to teach these
courses on technology.
However,
with the increase in the graying population and low
birth rate in the last decades, European countries would
be needing the services of highly skilled and
intelligent manpower from other countries like the
Philippines, he said.
The
workforce for BPOs include those in contact centers,
back office, medical transcription, legal transcription,
other data transcription, animation, software
development, engineering design and digital content.
Custodio
noted that opportunities would be in finance and
accounting, as 28 percent of the Filipino graduates come
from the business administration and other related
courses.
He said
the biggest number of employees in BPO services is the
contact center (or call center) with 64,000 employees in
2004, which further increased to 160,000 in 2006. The
number of call-center employees is expected to increase
to 331,000 in 2010.
Various
countries in the Asia-Pacific region have presented
opportunities for investments, particularly in China and
Vietnam. The Philippines cited its landmark growth in
the BPO services that contributed multibillion-dollar
revenues in the last five years.
Custodio
said the contact-center industry is the fastest-growing
industry in the country with revenues worth $2.7 billion
in 2006 at 50-percent growth rate.
Back-office operations, meanwhile, contributed $288
million in revenues at 60-percent growth rate. There are
now 100 service providers of back-office operations with
36,000 employees.
Meanwhile, the
Philippines
boasted that its medical-transcription services has a
current 98 percent to 99 percent accuracy rate and with
a turnaround time of 12 to 24 hours. The sector
contributed some $117 million in terms of revenues in
2006 at 67-percent growth rate.
Legal-transcription services, meanwhile, have been
introduced in the last three years with only nine firms.
But the sector has already contributed $9 million worth
of revenues in 2006 at a growth rate of 50 percent.
Custodio
said there are now around 500 software-development
companies in the Philippines with 79,469 IT
professionals. The sector has contributed around $272
million in 2006.
The
engineering-design industry with only 24 companies,
meanwhile, has contributed $68 million worth of revenues
in 2006, he said.
He said
the Philippines has more than 10 key BPO industry
centers that include five in Metro Manila—Makati,
Ortigas, Quezon City, Alabang and Libis. Other centers
include cities of
Pasay, Novaliches and Malabon as well as
Cebu,
Clark, Dumaguete and Davao cities.
Custodio
also identified other hot spots for the BPO industry
that are being developed by the government. These
include cities of Iloilo, Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro, Lipa,
Batangas, Naga, Legazpi, Tacloban as well as Subic in
Olongapo. |
