PGMA: RP’s BPO industry, a global power house
BACOLOD CITY — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said that the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines is now considered a global power house with its tremendous growth from $0.02 billion in 2001 to $7.3 billion in 2009.
This industry has created 500,000 jobs in the country. This she said is a legacy that she will leave before she ends her term in June this year.
She said, “This is a legacy of hard work, a strong and stable economy, renewed global engagement, major investments in health care and education, and dramatic improvements in the physical infrastructure like the Bacolod-Silay airport road, the Bacolod airport irrigation and RORO ports. “Much work remains to be done, but I am determined to turn over to a new government a new Philippines ready for the challenge of bringing the nation to the verge of first world in 20 years,” she said at the Teleperformance Bacolod site during her Cyber Corridor tour recently.
This Cyber Corridor tour, she said, is part of a tour of the Super Regions: Agribusiness Mindanao, Tourism Central Philippines, the North Luzon Agribusiness Quadrangle, the Luzon Urban Beltway and the Cyber Corridor.
“We designed them to spread development away from the inequitable concentration in Manila. The Cyber Corridor was identified by the private sector, the academe and government comprising the strongest potential locations for ICT investments like call centers, back office, software development, medical transcription, engineering design, animation and game development. It includes Metro Manila and Metro Cebu, the two original ICT centers of Excellence; and 10 urban areas being promoted as the best new destinations for ICT: Metro Laguna; Metro Cavite; Iloilo; Davao; Bacolod; Metro Pampanga; Metro Bulacan; Cagayan de Oro; Central Bulacan and Lipa,” she said.
Bacolod’s best assets are its people and their progressive mindset that spills over to the BPO employees who come from different parts of the region to live and work in Bacolod.
Meanwhile, Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue reported to President Arroyo that as of today, from a handful of outsourcing jobs in 2004, Bacolod serves as host to seven contact center companies that generated 7,000 jobs.
These translate to almost 3,000 seats or technically based on PEZA stanadards–a direct investment of more than 15 million dollars and the infusion of almost 80 million pesos every month in terms of salaries in Bacolod. This is not including the ancillary services which have benefited from the IT-BPO growth such as hotels, restaurants, department stores, transport, medical institutions and other business because of the increase in the purchasing power of almost 35,000 Negrenses and Bacolodnons who depend on the 7,000 workers. (CC)
