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RP set to overtake India in
business outsourcing
MANILA, Philippines -- THE PHILIPPINES is poised to overtake
India as the world's top provider of business process
outsourcing services as industry players firm up their strength
and marketing efforts.
Cesar B. Bautista, co-chairman of the National Competitiveness
Council (NCC), told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the
Indian cyber services sector was losing its edge as
telecommunication infrastructure get saturated and costs go up.
"At the same time, our BPO sector has started strengthening
their organization into something like India's Nasscom [National
Association of Software and Services Companies], which can
represent the members as a bigger and more influential entity,"
Bautista said.
He was alluding to the Business Process Association of the
Philippines, which he said could now be more decisive because it
had reformed its structure, unlike the "weak" group it had been
in the past years.
Bautista, a former trade secretary who now represents the
private sector in the NCC, said it was only expected that the
Philippines would emerge as a leading provider of BPO services
despite coming into it later than India did.
He noted that information technology-enabled services had become
the fastest growing sector in the economy, which is expected to
be providing some 400,000 jobs by the end of this year compared
to 8,000 in 2000.
"Our cyber services sector is growing much than that of India
and the projection that by 2010, the industry would represent a
million jobs and $12 billion in revenues is not farfetched,"
Bautista said.
To prove his point, Bautista cited to a report that US-based
research firm Frontier Strategy Group released earlier this
month, which identified the Philippines as one of seven markets
that would drive corporate profit growth in 2008 and beyond.
Titled "Shift from the BRIC to the Future 7," the study showed
that the country--along with Indonesia, inland Brazil (as
opposed to the coastal areas), inland China, Mexico, Turkey and
Vietnam--was replacing the BRIC countries (coastal Brazil,
Russia, urban India, and coastal China) as markets of fast
growth.
Based on FSG's survey of at least 100 top executives from top
performing firms in the world, 86 percent said the Philippines
was a top destination in the Asia-Pacific-together with inland
China, Vietnam and Indonesia.
--By Ronnel Domingo
Inquirer
Last updated 06:06pm (Mla time) 09/23/2007
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