More BPO companies, german firms seen locating in PH

Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon M. Lopez said that a number of IT-BPM companies had shared plans to expand their operations here in the Philippines, eventually generating a total of at least 1,100 jobs.

“We also met several companies [in Germany] and some mentioned plans to locate or expand in the Philippine IT-BPM sector, selecting (the country) as the location of their shared service centers catering to the Asia Pacific market,” Lopez said.

These companies are Fresenius Medical Care, Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), Merck and Bosch Communications Center, all of which, according to Lopez, would expand their workforce before 2020.

Merck, which Lopez said opened its IT-BPM operations a year ago, accounted for the biggest expansion plan in terms of workforce, offering procurement, accounting, HR and IT services for its North America and Asia-Pacific markets.

From initially having 125 employees in July last year, the company plans to expand operations “in the next 3-4 years by expanding services and scope, to employ 800 people by 2020.”

Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), the third-largest multinational company in the country which has been here for around five decades now, chose Manila for its new service location in the Asia-Pacific and will start with 200 employees. Currently, Lopez said the company had two service locations located in Ingelheim for the European Union market and Buenos Aires for the South America market.

“The choice of Manila as the Asia-Pacific location was mainly because of the country’s good university system and access to talented workforce. The Manila operations will start in October 2017, with 200 employees, initially servicing the Australia and New Zealand markets. The future plan is to have the Philippines as a global center for BI shared services,” he said.

From a staff complement of 77 in 2017, Fresenius Medical Care will increase its number of employees to 130 in three years, the official added. Fresenius Medical Care, the world’s leading provider of products and services for people with chronic kidney failure, operates 21 dialysis clinics all over the country. It has opened its shared service center in Alabang in 2015, servicing the accounting and finance operations of 30 countries.

Lopez said there were also plans for Fresenius Kabi, a global healthcare company under the Fresenius Group, to open its IT-BPM operations in the Philippines in the short term.

“In terms of its medical care operations, they see the need to further expand their operations in the country to 25 clinics by end 2017 and up to 37 by 2020,” Lopez added.