Most new global BPO jobs generated in the Philippines

While India continues to be one of the favored global outsourcing centers, it is interesting to note that most of the new employment opportunities in BPO industry worldwide were created in the Philippines during the last month. This has, in effect, made the Philippines the fasted emerging BPO service hub globally.

Industry expert and president of a consultancy, recruitment and training organization TeleDevelopment Jon E Kaplan has been quoted by BusinessWorld Online as saying that altogether there 25,700 new job opportunities were created in the business process outsourcing sector in the Philippines during the February 2010. Among these new jobs, as many as 72 per cent were based in the Philippines, he added.

The industry expert said that all new job opportunities were generated for the voice services. According to Mr. Kaplan, a number of new call center employments were opened due to the development activities undertaken by a number of firms in this sector. In fact, he said that the statistics were collected from 40 leading companies in the BPO sector that had created anything between 1,000 and 3,000 job opportunities during the last month.

Elucidating further, Mr. Kaplan pointed out that the new jobs were created for a variety of reasons. According to him, while some new jobs were created as firms established new call center units, others were a result of mergers and expansions of the call center companies. Citing the instance of BPO service provider Stream Global took over e-Telecare with a view to expand its business as well as capacities and hence, Mr. Kaplan said that this resulted in the creation of additional seats in their set-up. In addition, many relatively small BPO firms are also expanding.

It may be noted that the BPO industry in the Philippines had created as many as 70,000 new employment opportunities during 2009, with the contact center sector having the maximum number of employees – 280,000 agents, during 2009. Despite, the worldwide economic slump, the BPO industry in this far eastern nation was successful in spawning revenues to the tune of $7.2 billion during the last fiscal denoting an increase of 19 per cent in comparison to the $6.06 billion generated in revenues during 2008. In fact, as many as 442,000 people were employed by the entire BPO service sector in the country during 2009. This was despite the fact that the growth during 2009 was sluggish compared to 2008, during which the industry witnesses 24 per cent overall growth.