The Philippines as a Call Center Hub in the World

Undoubtedly, the Philippines being in the Third World country is sharing a big slice in the success of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. The outsourced voiced-based (or call center) remain strong in generating millions of revenue for the country over the past years.

And speaking of it, India was the center of the growth in outsourcing but the Philippines is lobbying seriously to gain the paradigm shift in the outsourcing. When it was introduced in the country, it became emerging industry offering systematic technology and never-ending opportunity to the workers. The BPO in the Philippines is attributed in the offshore market raking a total of $25.6 billion in 2006, landing third between India and China. On the other hand, the overall offshore IT market is estimated at $36 billion and growing. The revenue increased to 62% comparing in 2004 with posted income of over $1.3 billion in the same year. It is estimated that 200,000 talented Filipinos are working in 120 BPO facilities nationwide in 2006. It was forecasted by the national government and outsourcing players to earn US$11 billion by employing 900,000 people by the year 2010.

The growth in the Philippine call centers is fueled because of the high-end quality contact centers offering different services such as Web design, medical transcription, software development, legal services, animation, and other shared services. The call centers have the largest portion sector because of the fluency in the English language. In maintaining the industry, the National Government continues to offer fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to attract locators to outsource their business in the country. The details of this contract is written under the 2006 Investment Priorities Plan, which was formulated by the Board of Investments (BOI), as the lead agency in promoting investments, focused on the sectors identified in the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) 2004-2010 (PBOI 2006).

Today, large outsourcing players started to expand their operation in the provinces giving the people from the province to work in the call center by not staying in Manila anymore. The local government units in the Philippines promote their respective cities to the foreign investors that it's viable to put up centers in their area not only in the mainland city. BPO centers are found in the cities of Lipa, Baguio, Dagupan in Luzon; the cities of Cebu, Bacolod, Dumaguete, Iloilo in Visayas region; and the cities of Davao, Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao.

The Philippines is among of the offshore "centers of excellence" in Asia Pacific alongside its fellow Asian countries which are India and China. The country is recognized to be good in the inbound and outbound call centers which satisfy the customers worldwide because of its strong English speaking people. It was reported that the Asia Pacific regions topped the as the best destination for outsourcing and placed second in terms of the BPO market solutions.

It cannot be denied that studies spearheaded by private sectors classified the Philippines as the center of excellence in service providers for the outsourcing. In the next following years, the programs of the National Government like providing scholarship and allocating budget in the trainings to the near hire applicants will add as manpower in strengthening the workforce of the country's outsourcing sector.