Philippines Outsourcing gets nod from Int’l biz leaders

THIS is getting good in the Philippines BPO (business process outsourcing) and call center business in the country in the start of the year 2008. In a statement from Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo noted that she will seriously promote the BPO, especially contact centers as one of the premiere industries in the country.

The statement was made during Mrs. Arroyo’s three-day visit to Switzerland from January 25 to 28. This is the first international forum attended by the President from the start of the year 2008. Mrs. Arroyo, clad in all-black gown attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and meets several world leaders from different nations.

The international business forum is a great opportunity for the country to be acknowledged with the effort to sustain the growth of the outsourcing industry. It is advantage that Mrs. Arroyo has full chance to promote the country as a premiere investment destination in Asia. Mrs. Arroyo stressed out that she is promoting the Filipino expertise in IT (information technology), contact center companies, among others.

In the recent statement of the President during the joint National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA)-Cabinet cluster and the National Anti-Poverty Commission-Cabinet cluster meeting, Mrs. Arroyo said: “another central goal of our trip is to continue the relentless promotion of the Philippines as a great place to invest and do business.”

“For the first time in a generation, the Philippine economy is on a path to sustained economic growth, creating millions of new jobs and billions of new pesos in revenue to invest in our people and our infrastructure to build up our nation. Foreign investment is central to that progress,” the President stressed, which is posted at the Office of the Press Secretary website.

To prove this, the country’s gross domestic product grew up to 7.1 percent in the first nine months of 2007. And also, Mrs. Arroyo will fly to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Saturday noon (early Saturday evening in Manila), which also seek more investments to the country. The more international relations will be a great boom in the Philippines because the country is gaining reputation in terms of the outsourcing.

In addition, the Philippines is the leading supplier of call center agents to the international key players’ investors in the global outsourcing. Every year, the demand of the customer service is growing. It is now the full responsibility of the Philippine Government to maintain the fuel of competitive workers to fill in the vacant positions. It has been said that the country produces about 380,000 graduates every year. Though it is admitted that some of the graduates can’t speak good English; the Department of Education (DepEd) is enhancing its standard that English must consider as the major of instructions in every school. And also, the National Government allocated budget to DepEd in order to boost the teaching quality as well as to produce graduates to be easily qualified when applying jobs to the call center in the Philippines.

In 2010, the National Government expects that its target in terms of jobs for the Filipinos will flourish its goal. As ten of thousands Filipinos are presently employed in call centers, and BPO companies is the result of the effort to strengthen its campaign.

To date, these call center employees from all ages totally enjoy the blessing of the booming outsourcing industry. Potential outsourcer players continue to consider the Philippines as the first choice in putting up their business.