More office spaces for Mactan Newtown

With an eye on positioning their first township development in Mactan as the next outsourcing hub in Cebu, Megaworld Corp. said they will be building 150,000 square meters of office space by 2018.

In a press briefing last Friday, Megaworld Corp first vice president Jericho P. Go said they are keen on expanding their office spaces for outsourcing companies in their 20-hectare The Mactan Newtown property in Mactan, Cebu.

“This will happen in the next three to five years and we expect to generate 40,000 full-time BPO (business process outsourcing) employees by 2018,” he said.

Go said the growth will be fueled by the availability of qualified manpower, assistance from the local government and cheaper labor within Mactan.

Among their first locators is Results Manila of the The Results Companies which will launch their office at the One World Center, the first office building in the property, on Thursday.

Kevin Betts, Results Company vice president for facilities development and administration, said their Cebu office is their fourth in the country since they first set up four years ago.

The Cebu office occupies the second to fourth floors of One World Center or 3,700 square meters of space which would accommodate 1,500 employees within the year.

“The investment was P220 million and we expect to hire all 1,500 within the next quarter. As of now we are at 400 people,” he said.

Betts said they are actively ramping up their recruitment with a job fair on Thursday.

“Of the 400 employees we have now, 57 percent are from Lapu-Lapu, 23 percent from Mandaue City, 11 percent from Cebu City and the rest (nine percent) are from other areas,” said Betts.

Results Manila has 4,500 employees in the country and they target to grow by 35 percent more within the year. A fifth office is also being built and will be launched soon.

“Our plan is to have a couple more sites within the first quarter of 2014 and we’ll be going to less developed areas or areas with growing BPO opportunities like Mactan,” Betts said.

Globally, The Results Companies has 7,500 employees with seven sites in the US, two in Mexico, one in Costa Rica and another one in the Latin America region.

Aside from Results Manila, EnfraUSA is also completing its office at One World Center and will start operations within the year.

Go said they are confident that they can develop their Mactan property into another hub in Cebu given the abundant manpower supply within the island alone.

“Currently you have 90,000 employees now working in outsourcing companies in Cebu City. If you do the math, you can safely say that 20,000 of that are staying in Mactan. That’s a huge manpower base that companies locating here could tap. We see a lot of potential,” he said.

Three more projects are currently being built in the property which will offer more office spaces for BPO companies.