Cebu retains 8th spot in top destination list

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu City has retained its eighth position in the 2014 Top 100 Outsourcing Destinations Report of Tholons, a US-based services globalization and investment advisory for global outsourcing and research firm.

Cebu City beats other high-profile locations in Europe in the 2014 ranking and just trailing behind Bangalore, Manila, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune.

In 2012, Tholons listed Cebu as the ninth emerged destination for business process outsourcing (BPO) globally.

Cebu First District Representative Gerald Anthony Gullas Jr. told the Philippine News Agency Sunday, “Cebu’s reputation as a prime world-class outsourcing hub will get an even bigger boost once the Mactan Newtown is fully developed.”

Gullas is referring to the 28.8-hectare special information-technology  park and economic zone being built by publicly listed Megaworld Corporation as a “live-work-play” community in Lapu-Lapu City in Mactan Island.

“Cebu has all the building blocks needed to rapidly grow as an outsourcing hub. Besides the policy environment and fiscal incentives, we have the required college-educated human resources and infrastructure, including advanced connectivity,” Gullas said.

“It is also easier to live, work and play in Cebu, where there is less congestion and stress. The costs of living and doing business in Cebu are likewise lower compared to Metro Manila and other global outsourcing sites,” he said.

The Tholons rankings are based on a rigorous location screening framework, and regarded by industry stakeholders as the best grading of global outsourcing hubs.

Once fully developed, business process outsourcing firms based at the P20-billion Mactan Newtown are expected to directly engage some 45,000 knowledge workers.

Mactan Newtown’s first office tower has already been fully leased by Diamond Bar, California-based Enfrasoft Inc. and Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based The Results Companies.

Without counting Mactan Newtown, Cebu now has 25 fully functional IT parks, plus 12 more being developed, providing plenty of high-tech office spaces to BPO firms, Gullas said.

Accenture Inc., Convergys Philippines Servi-ces Corp., TeleTech Customer Care Management Philippines Inc., JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A.-Philippine Global Service Center, Stream International Global Services Philippines Inc., IBM Corp., Sykes Asia Inc., Aegis PeopleSupport Inc., NCR Cebu Development Center Inc., and Wipro BPO Phi-lippines Ltd. Inc. are among the multinational firms with extensive BPO activities in Cebu.

BPO firms in Central Visayas – mostly in Cebu and partly in Negros Oriental – already employ over 100,000 full-time workers, and yield more than US$ 500 million in annual revenues.

The country’s BPO and IT-enabled services industry encompasses contact center services; back offices; medical, legal and other data transcription; animation; software development; engineering design; and digital content.

According to the IT and Business Processing Association of the Philippines, the industry is expected to add some 372,000 new jobs from 2014 to 2016.

A large supply of co-llege-educated, fluent English-speaking professionals has been a key growth driver of the BPO sector, which is projected to fully employ some 1.3 million Filipinos and generate up to US$ 27 billion in annual revenues by 2016.

Gullas is author of a bill seeking to reinforce the use of English in all school levels, in a bid to make the nation’s future human resources highly competitive in the global labor markets. —/JMO (FREEMAN)