For the Philippine Outsourcing industry, the analyst continue to project positive growth. Growth being measured in terms of the business deals signed alone does not provide an accurate picture of what this sunshine industry truly contributes to the Philippine economy and the Filipinos. The businesses for the service providers continue to pour in as the figures to show, but the Filipinos workforce development seems still behind. There is an issue that more outsourcing deals closed, more available jobs for the Filipinos, the mainstream news continues to report the expansion of the existing outsourcing providers even setting up operations outside Manila to top cities like Cebu, Laguna and Bacolod. With the Prudential Corp., the IPVG Corp signed an outsourcing deal to Vietnamn to provide voice and non-voice services. The IPVG will be hiring 400 employees for the project. Convergys Corporation also plans to hire 1,000 employees for the new contract center. The Business Process Outsourcing company Affiliated Computer Services Inc. that also announced their plans to add 2,000 more seats in the next six months.
The Bacolod officials announced the opening of Transcom Asia which is initially starts with 800 employees and later on it is expected to hire 2,000 -3,000 employees. The Thomson Reuters will also be putting up a legal content business in the country, the IBM Philippines also bagged a 7 year outsourcing contact with the Sara Lee Corp last March. The news is like these make the readers believe that the Philippine outsourcing industry 15 percent growth rate target and 1.5 million jobs are really achievable.
In the low compensation of Filipino Business Process Outsourcing workers a form of Labor Exploitation, the Philippines continues to attract outsourcing deals because it offers one of the lowest compensation costs in the world. The member of the Philippine Parliament Mong Palatino representing the youth sector, challenges the notion saying that it is an inappropriate indicator of the country’s improving performance in the global competitive index. The low compensation of Filipino Business Process Outsourcing employees is a form of the labor exploitation. The other side of the coin is that Senator Mar Roxas campaigning for the retention of the current Business Process Outsourcing rates to retain the country’s rates within the market rates.
The Philippines has been surpassed by the other Asian countries including Malaysia and Thailand despite of being a popular outsourcing destination. The Philippines Business Process Outsourcing sector needs to find more ways to entice foreign investments to come in without bringing down the labor cost too low and with a cheaper labor cost. The talented Filipinos instead of becoming involved in the outsourcing industry and bringing about the real industry development might opt to shy away from it making the talented workforce even in smaller for the industry. The human resource recruiters complain of the decreasing number of the qualified applicants. The Business Process Outsourcing firms pays a better than local businesses, in the comparison with the other sectors within the country, Business Process Outsourcing offer a higher compensation. In a Business Process Outsourcing receives P22,500 a month while working in a local hospital that will only bring P10,000 per month that the nurse who takes a transcription job in a BPO.
REFERENCE:
http://www.blog.infinit-o.com/philippine-outsourcing-growth/
