The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) expects profits from the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector to sustain double-digit growth in the next years and that it will continue to boost services account surpluses.
The services account is part of the monitored components of the BSP’s balance of payments statistics.
Based on its latest Survey of Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) Services report, the central bank affirmed the IT-BPOs’ dollar revenues of $12.1 billion in 2011, up 20.1 percent year-on-year. The industry includes contact or call centers, transcription, animation, software development and other BPOs.
In the report, the BSP stated that the industry’s export earnings increased 17.8 percent in 2011 to $11.2 billion. The amount accounted for 92.4 percent of the industry’s revenues in that year, which was lower compared to 2010’s 94.2 percent.
Equity capital investments in the IT-BPO industry totaled $5.7 billion in the same period, and about 93.2 percent or $5.4 billion came from foreign direct investors. Except for contact or call enters and other BPOs, which recorded declines in foreign-to-total equity ratio, the other three sub-sectors of the industry posted increases in their foreign equity participation, explained the BSP.
Contact or call centers remained the biggest contributors to total revenues at 56.5 percent and is the driver of growth, the report stated. In 2011 however, contact or call centers posted a much lower export-to-revenue ratio at 90.4 percent in 2011 from 97.4 percent in 2010, since they had more Philippine-owned companies as clients in 2011. “(But) the country retained its status as the contact center capital of the world after overtaking India in 2010,” said the BSP.
In the meantime the IT-BPO sector reported total employment of 679,464 in 2011, 26.7 percent higher than what was recorded in 2010. Contact or call centers was the biggest employer with 63.8 percent of the share. “Contact centers also contributed 19.3 percentage points to the industry’s employment growth in 2011 (while) the total compensation paid by the industry amounted to $5.8 billion in 2011, 27.7 percent higher than the $4.5 billion registered in 2010,” said the BSP. The annual average compensation per employee in 2011 slightly increased by 0.8 percent to $8,464 compared to 2010.

Source: Manila Bulletin - April 28, 2013