02 June 2016, Ambassador Antonio A. Morales of the Philippine Embassy in Singapore, in cooperation with the Philippine Trade and Investment Center (PTIC), hosted a Breakfast Roundtable at the Official Residence. Mr. Raymond A. Lacdao, Director for External Affairs of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) spoke on the business outlook and prospects of the IT-Business Process Management industry in the Philippines. Eighteen (18) representatives of various business sectors in Singapore participated in the discussion.
In his welcome remarks, H.E. Ambassador Antonio A. Morales noted that the BPO sector has grown at a compound annual growth rate of around 10% over the past decade and because of this, it has become the country’s largest source of private employment and the second-largest contributor of foreign exchange earnings after remittances. By 2016, the IT-BPO industry is projected to generate 1.3 million new jobs, with a 17 percent annual growth rate and is touted to overtake overseas remittances as the main source of dollars, he added.
Mr. Lacdao said that the Philippines continues to be one of the world leaders in the BPO industry and in his presentation, he highlighted the big names engaged in BPO in the Philippines, such as Convergys, Accenture, Teletech, Teleperformance and Sutherland, among others. The Philippines’ leadership in the global BPO industry can be attributed to the depth of talent available in the country and the high level of customer service and degree of empathy that Filipino workers exhibit in the workplace, according to Mr. Lacdao. Further, Mr. Lacdao mentioned that the tremendous growth in the industry is also partly due to the fact that the clients of the BPO companies mandate that they locate in the Philippines.
Mr. Lacdao emphasized that the Philippine BPO industry is interested in “repetitive processes that Singaporean companies want to offload”, such as payroll, collection, accounting services. Outside of voice-based services, the Philippines has ventured into more high-value services such as legal research, medical transcription, software development, computer-aided design, animation, gaming software, and more complex back office services, he further noted.
