The Philippine BPO sector to develop ten new destinations
The Philippine BPO sector is placing all its expectations for the unremitting development of the purported ‘10 next-wave cities’ including Davao, Bacolod, Baguio, Sta. Rosa, Metro Cavite, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro, Malolos, Dumaguete and Lipa. According to a recent report published by a news website, the BPAP or the Business Processing Association of the Philippines is of the view that the appropriate growth of these latest outsourcing locations in the Philippines will deal with alarming apprehensions like rising wages and leasing expenses and the worsening availability of expertise in the first-wave cities, such as the Metro Manila, Clark and Cebu City.
During a recent presentation before the media, BPAP CEO and President Oscar Sanez expressed hope that the new BPO destinations in the country will be able to augment the talent pool as well as curtail the wages and leasing inflation experienced by the first-wave BPO locations. He further elucidated that the ten new-wave cities were chosen following a combined survey by the Commission on Information and Communications Technology, Department of Trade and Industry and the BPAP based on factors like availability of local expertise, business milieu as well as the cost of infrastructure.
Speaking on the occasion the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) executive director Jojo Uligan pointed out that the above mentioned factors were the prime issues when any investor selects a business location and the scores obtained by the ten cities indicate the preparedness of these locations to accommodate the BPO firms desiring to set up new centers in the Philippines.
It may be noted that during the joint survey that appraised as many as 30 different locations, Davo City obtained the maximum score vis-à-vis availability of graduate workforce and this is important considering the fact that the criteria of availability of expertise alone carries the maximum influence at 40 per cent in grading the new locations. According to the survey, during the end of 2009, approximately 85% of the 442,000 Philippines’ IT and BPO workforce were placed in well-known IT-BPO centers like Metro Manila, Metro Clark and Metro Cebu.
Uligan said that the continuous expansion of the ten new cities will enable the country to expand it location portfolio and thereby, enhance its prospects of alluring more investors to the Philippines. He pointed out that the development of new location will tackle the problem of unemployment, which is rampant in the BPO industry. At the same time, this will also reduce the competition for talent pool.