ILOILO CITY?AN INDIAN business process outsourcing (BPO) firm will open a call center in this city by the middle of the year and is expected to hire about 1,500 employees.

Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas said the Hinduja Global Solutions was looking for office space for the call center.

?They are committed and they want to start operations by the second half of the year,? Treñas told the Inquirer in a telephone interview recently.

Hinduja Global Solutions has 23 delivery centers in countries such as India, United States, Canada, Mauritius and the Philippines with about 14,500 employees.

Treñas met last Thursday with the company?s top executives, Antonio dela Cruz, senior vice president for finance and corporate services and Pushka Misra, president and chief executive officer for Philippine operations of Hinduja Global Solutions, to discuss the investment plans.

The Hinduja Global Solutions call center will be the 10th in Iloilo. The nine others already employ more than 6,000 workers.

The call centers include Teletech, ePLDT Ventus, Callbox Customer Contact Center, Global Mega Communications Inc., Techno Call Corp., Interactive Voice Call Center, Medlink Trans Services, Eversun Software Philippines Corp. and Savant Technologies.

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) recently ranked Iloilo third among the top 10 ?next wave? cities in the Philippines for business process outsourcing and information technology because of the low cost of doing business and the availability of talent.

It follows Metro Laguna and Metro Cavite and is followed by Davao. Bacolod City is ranked fifth followed by Bulacan East, Bulacan West, Cagayan de Oro, Lipa City and Pampanga Central.

Last year, BusinessWeek magazine said Iloilo and Davao were among the 31 cities that were being eyed by BPO investors due to economic and political pressures to outsource work to lower-cost cities.