THE Philippines has urged European private investors to engage in the booming business-process outsourcing (BPO) in the Philippines, citing the growing number of available Filipino talents capable to perform emerging business demands.

Foreign Undersecretary for International Economic Affairs Edsel Custodio said the steady growth in the BPO services is expected to increase in terms of manpower and available infrastructure being developed as BPO industry emerging centers.

The challenge is the current state to beef up our manpower resources, quality certification and security compliance, which are all being addressed and in the final stages of implementation, said Custodio in his speech at the Asia-Pacific Week recently held in Berlin, Germany.

In his forecast presented during the forum, Custodio said the number of human resource for BPO services in the Philippines is expected to increase from the current 237,175 to 920,764 in 2010.

He said European countries have developed technology, designs and have various education institutions to teach these courses on technology.

However, with the increase in the graying population and low birth rate in the last decades, European countries would be needing the services of highly skilled and intelligent manpower from other countries like the Philippines, he said.

The workforce for BPOs include those in contact centers, back office, medical transcription, legal transcription, other data transcription, animation, software development, engineering design and digital content.

Custodio noted that opportunities would be in finance and accounting, as 28 percent of the Filipino graduates come from the business administration and other related courses.

He said the biggest number of employees in BPO services is the contact center (or call center) with 64,000 employees in 2004, which further increased to 160,000 in 2006. The number of call-center employees is expected to increase to 331,000 in 2010.

Various countries in the Asia-Pacific region have presented opportunities for investments, particularly in China and Vietnam. The Philippines cited its landmark growth in the BPO services that contributed multibillion-dollar revenues in the last five years.

Custodio said the contact-center industry is the fastest-growing industry in the country with revenues worth $2.7 billion in 2006 at 50-percent growth rate.

Back-office operations, meanwhile, contributed $288 million in revenues at 60-percent growth rate. There are now 100 service providers of back-office operations with 36,000 employees.

Meanwhile, the Philippines boasted that its medical-transcription services has a current 98 percent to 99 percent accuracy rate and with a turnaround time of 12 to 24 hours. The sector contributed some $117 million in terms of revenues in 2006 at 67-percent growth rate.

Legal-transcription services, meanwhile, have been introduced in the last three years with only nine firms. But the sector has already contributed $9 million worth of revenues in 2006 at a growth rate of 50 percent.

Custodio said there are now around 500 software-development companies in the Philippines with 79,469 IT professionals. The sector has contributed around $272 million in 2006.

The engineering-design industry with only 24 companies, meanwhile, has contributed $68 million worth of revenues in 2006, he said.

He said the Philippines has more than 10 key BPO industry centers that include five in Metro ManilaMakati, Ortigas, Quezon City, Alabang and Libis. Other centers include cities of Pasay, Novaliches and Malabon as well as Cebu, Clark, Dumaguete and Davao cities.

Custodio also identified other hot spots for the BPO industry that are being developed by the government. These include cities of Iloilo, Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro, Lipa, Batangas, Naga, Legazpi, Tacloban as well as Subic in Olongapo.

Source: BusinessMirror, By Estrella Torres