Philippine BPO industry endangered by 2010 election results?
While we mentioned the good news regarding the expansion of the BPO industry other areas such as IT and finance in earlier posts, there is another factor to be taken in consideration: Will the BPO industry retain its luster in the new administration to come after the results of the 2010 elections take effect? This question was raised by local journalists last month, shortly after outgoing Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo hailed the success of the US$7.2 billion local BPO industry which flourished under her term.
Gillian Joyce Virata, executive director for information and research at the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), said she hasn’t met with many positive reactions when it comes to getting support for the expansion of the country’s ICT sector, which comprises of the development of a cyber corridor that will expand technology knowledge centers to 10 other cities outside of Manila and Cebu City, which are currently the hotbed of ICT and BPO activities.
“We’ve approached some people but they appear not to be very receptive. However, we continue to be hopeful,” Virata said during a press conference at the 10th e-Services Global Sourcing Conference and Exhibition at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City. She said there remain tremendous potential for the country’s back office IT operations that are pushing business data processing, database management, finance, logistics, human resources and insurance management apart from contact centre operations. In fact, BPO services are crossing over to unlikely places, such as medical transcription services for U.S.-based hospitals, editing and content development services and financial planning firms, among others.
