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THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) said the Philippines
suffers from a shortage of qualified staff for the business process
outsourcing (BPO) sector.
In a report titled “An Analysis
of the Philippine Business Process Outsourcing Industry,” the ADB
said there are not enough qualified persons to meet the expected
growth in jobs in the BPO sector.
The industry forecast the
creation of about a million additional jobs until 2010.
The BPO sector includes contact
call centers, medical transcription, animation, shared services, and
software development and other outsourced service-type activities
that are information technology intensive.
“While the projected number of
college graduates until 2010 is more than the number of new
positions required, not all graduates will be interested in a BPO
job,” the ADB said.
“With college graduates in
cyber services-inclined disciplines numbering at least 300,000 per
year, there are potential individuals to fill in these positions.
However, considering that not all these tertiary graduates are
interested in a BPO job and that the current hiring rate is quite
low due to the large proportion of unqualified applicants, the
supply of qualified applicants is actually less than the demand,”
it added.
For the last five years, the BPO
sector enjoyed rapid growth, with revenues rising from 0.075 percent
of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000 to 2.4
percent in 2005. GDP is the amount of goods and services produced
locally.
The government also expects the
sector to generate huge employment in the next five years. From
about four contact centers in 2000, the number of contact centers
has increased to 114 as of the first quarter last year.
A sustained expansion of the BPO
sector, according to the study, will also generate 143,000 new jobs
in the other sectors of the economy by 2010.
Earlier, a study commissioned by
the Philippine Institute for Development and Studies said the
Philippines’ BPO industry is at risk owing to the volatile
political situation, corruption and threats to physical security.
“Efforts should be done to
improve the general business environment particularly by creating a
stable political condition. Though not often cited, the high power
rate is also a source of disadvantage for BPO companies as most of
them operate all day, seven days a week, at climate-controlled
environments. The Philippines has one of the highest tariffs for
electricity rates in Asia,” the study said.
The PIDS study added that the
sourcing of qualified BPO professionals is increasingly becoming a
problem, something that is predicted to worsen in the long term as
the quality of the country’s educational system further
deteriorates.
--Darwin G. Amojelar
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