Cebu continues to be a favored place for business process outsourcing investors as it ranked 8th in this year’s Tholon’s Top 100 Outsourcing Destinations Report.
Cebu climbed a notch higher in the Tholons’ report as Cebu was 9th in last year’s ranking.
“This year, Tholons, a leading full-service Strategic Advisory firm for Global Outsourcing and Research, named Cebu number eight (8th) on its top 100 list of established outsourcing destinations as indicated in the recent Tholons Top 100 Outsourcing Destinations Report for 2013, a notch higher than last year’s report,” said Joel Mari Yu, Cebu Investment Promotions Center (CIPC) managing director, in a statement yesterday.
manpower
The availability of quality manpower significantly contributed to the improvement of the Cebu ranking.
“Labor availability especially quality are among the criteria in selecting these top destinations. Tholons believes that one of the best value propositions of an outsourcing destination is its people,” said Yu.
Over the last five years, the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in Cebu has continuously expanded and has definitely become a large part of the economy in Cebu and Cebu City in particular, which Yu said he expected to grow over the next several years.
Last year, 17 new outsourcing companies opened office in Cebu generating at least 11,000 new jobs.
Most of these companies are into the higher skills outsourcing which includes software development and other back office processes.
five more firms
He said this year at least five more outsourcing firms are expected to open offices in Cebu.
Yu attributed the growth of the industry as the reason to Cebu’s attractiveness to foreign investors.
“Foreign businesses are attracted to Cebu for a lot of reasons. Since Cebu is an IT and academic hub in the southern Philippines, Cebuano workers are appealing because many of them can perform complex business tasks,” said Yu.
With Cebu’s improved ranking, Yu said he would expect more investors to come and look at Cebu this year.
95,000 workers
Based on latest CIPC data, there are approximately 95,000 people employed in the industry in Cebu.
As different colleges and universities produce at least 24,000 new graduates each year, more and more skilled young people are expected to sign up for work in the outsourcing companies and will help to continue to build the reputation of Cebu as a leading BPO destination, Yu said.
fierce competition
He, however, said that Cebu would continue to face challenges to become number one in the rankings especially with the fierce competition of many areas in Asia.
“Cebu will have to work to continue to build its reputation as an outsourcing leader to make it to the top. Cebu is currently poised as an outsourcing star. Let us continue to gain an edge on the prevailing competitive landscape of the global services outsourcing industry,” Yu said.