BPO industry earnings seen rising to $7.3B

The Philippine call center industry is expected to grow threefold in the next four years with annual revenue projected at $7.3 billion in 2010 and capacity at 500,000 seats, venture capitalist Intellectual Property Ventures Group Corp. (IP Ventures) said.The industry, which started about eight years ago with three call centers, today has 73. Of these, 66 are in Metro Manila but other areas are drawing the interest by offering tax incentives and other privileges.

From fewer than 500 seats in 1998, the total capacity is placed at 180,000 seats. Revenues reached $2.6 billion in 2005.

IP Ventures said the Philippines is an attractive location for offshore BPO and contact center companies, mainly because of its 94-percent literacy rate and the proficiency of its workforce in American English. It said the labor cost was about one-fifth that in the US.

IP Ventures is engaged in IT and telecommunications, online gaming services and data center operations. It has opened a wholly owned subsidiary, IP Contact Center Outsourcing Inc. (IPCCO), to provide services to the BPO industry.

IPCCO, registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, has infrastructure that can support 300 seats. It will initially focus on startup projects that will need a starting capacity of 50 seats each, IP Ventures chief executive Enrique Y. Gonzales said.

IP Ventures “expects IPCCO to become a revenue center as early as 2007,” Gonzales said. —Riza T. Olchondra, Inquirer, With INQ7.net