Dispatches

By Jesus F. Llanto
Researcher, Newsbreak
December 1, 2008

It’s already 9 p.m. but the day has just started for a group of call center employees in an outsourcing firm in Quezon City. They will be wearing headsets and talking to customers calling from the other side of the world, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, until 6 a.m. Every two hours, they will be given 30-minute breaks, which most of them spend by smoking outside their office buildings.

More than five years ago, one could see this familiar scene only in the business districts of Makati and Ortigas, where most business outsourcing (BPO) firms are located. Now, the scene is replicated all throughout the archipelago—from Baguio to Bacolod and from Dumaguete to Davao.

Driven by shrinking talent pool, wage inflation and increasing rental rates, BPO companies in the Philippines have been expanding and locating in the provinces, outside established outsourcing hubs, for the past few years.

“We are avoiding another Bangalore in the making,” said Teletech senior vice president Maulik Parekh in a local governance conference on October attended by representatives from local government units (LGUs) interested in attracting investments from the BPO industry. Parekh was explaining why some BPO firms are establishing their presence outside Metro Manila and he was referring to the case of India’s outsourcing hub where concentration of BPO firms in one location resulted in high labor and rental rates.

Dubbed as one of the sunshine industries of the Philippines, the BPO sector employs around 300,000 workers and generated US$4.9 billion in 2007. For the past three years, the industry revenues have grown by an average of 50 percent.

Manila-centric

Around 80 percent of BPO workers, however, are employed by outsourcing firms based in Metro Manila. In contrast, data from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) showed that 74 percent of around 400,000 graduates every year are from outside Metro Manila. (abs-cbnNews.com/Newsbreak)

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Photo: www.abs-cbnnews.com