Call centers to provide more jobs in 2014, says congressman

MANILA, Philippines—Call centers or business process outsourcing companies will remain a major source of employment in 2014, and could provide up to 124,000 new full-time jobs this year, according to Pasig Representative Roman Romulo.

Romulo, chair of the House committee on higher and technical education and a backer of the industry, said in a press statement Wednesday that BPO companies would play an important role in providing jobs especially to college graduates.

“Based on sectoral projections, we are confident that BPO firms will be able to add an average of 124,000 well-paying jobs annually from 2014 to 2016, or a total of 372,000 new posts over the next three years,” Romulo said.

“We are counting on the bigger BPO players to continue to drive the formation of new jobs,” he added.

He noted that BPO companies made P192 billion in revenues in 2012.

Major players in the industry include Accenture and Convergys Philippines Services Corp., which each have more than 35,000 employees. Accenture’s 2012 revenues stood at P28.104 billion, while that of Convergys was P17.281 billion.

Other top earning BPO firms were JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A–Philippine Global Service Center (P10.805 billion); 24/7 Customer Philippines Inc. (P7.711 billion); Telephilippines Inc. (P7.241 billion); TeleTech Offshore Investments B.V. (P6.978 billion); Sutherland Global Services Philippines Inc. (P6.805 billion); Stream International Global Services Philippines Inc. (P6.738 billion); Sitel Philippines Corp. (P6.364 billion); and Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd. (P5.754 billion).

“As they draw in more business, the super BPO firms can quickly scale up their activities here and hire extra staff, while reducing cost per unit of output owing to greater operational efficiency,” Romulo said.

Romulo also authored the Data Privacy Act, which his statement said played a part in getting global corporations to establish new operations here in the country.

Under this law, all entities, including BPO companies, must protect the confidentiality of personal information collected from clients and stored in their systems. This requirement conforms with strict international privacy standards.