More jobs seen as three foreign BPOs eye Manila operations

THREE more foreign business process outsourcing (BPO) firms will open their Manila operations soon, an industry official said on Friday.

On the sidelines of the 17th Metro Manila Business Conference, Jonathan de Luzuriaga, Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) executive director for industry affairs, told reporters that two Indian companies are expected to start in about 60 days. These Indian BPO firms, whose initial operations will have a combined capacity of 500 seats, will service both voice and non-voice accounts, he said.

The third BPO of an American financial institution, which already has operations here through a third-party outsourcing firm, will have its own back office hub in the Philippines by yearend, de Luzuriaga said.

The Philippine BPO industry is still confident it will hit this year’s “conservative” growth target of between 20 percent and 30 percent. “There is no crisis in the BPO sector,” de Luzuriaga said.

“Inquiries are still coming in—they don’t stop. We are working closely with the BOI [Board of Investments] in pursuing leads,” he said.

The official said back office operations, which he said are projected to grow over 100 percent this year, will largely boost the local BPO industry’s performance this year. “We are getting more inquiries for knowledge process outsourcing lately, no longer much for voice services.”

The voice contact center sector earlier said it is expecting a relatively slower growth of 15 percent this year, as its biggest market—the US—is in recession.

While the US will remain a major market, de Luzuriaga said the industry is also actively conducting promotions in up-and-coming markets, such as the United Kingdom. “The UK is a low-lying fruit,” he said, adding that they will have several trade missions to the European country soon.

De Luzuriaga said officials of BPAP and the Commission on Information and Communications Technology are also in the US to hold trade missions in line with President Arroyo’s state visit there.

Earlier, the Department of Trade and Industry reported that investment pledges with its incentive-giving agencies plunged 71.6 percent in the first half of the year. But the Trade department said commitments in the information technology (IT) services sector—which includes BPOs—has increased by about two-fold in the second quarter, with P6.48-billion worth of investments compared with P2.45 billion in the first quarter. The Trade department said IT services remain one of the country’s investment growth drivers. — Ben Arnold O. de Vera, Reporter, Manila Times with Report From Mark Anthony R. Garcia