Monday, August 18, 2008 [ philstar.com ]
With demand for business process outsourcing (BPO) space still high, Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc., the property holding firm of the family of Senator Manuel Villar, is raring to jump into the BPO bandwagon with plans to set up office buildings in the provinces, particularly in the southern points of Mega Manila.
In a press briefing, Vista Land president and chief executive officer Benjamarie Therese N. Serrano said the company is in talks with several BPO players which are branching out into the provinces due to intense competition for labor, rising costs and congestion.
Serrano said Vista Land may start construction of the office buildings next year. “We plan to build in areas where we own properties,” she said.
Most of the global BPOs that have set up headquarters in Metro Manila have started to expand their operations in the provinces which include Lipa, Baguio, Dagupan in Luzon; the cities of Cebu, Bacolod, Dumaguete, Iloilo in Visayas region; and the cities of Davao, Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao.
The growth in the Philippine call centers is fueled because of the high-end quality contact centers offering different services such as Web design, medical transcription, software development, legal services, animation, and other shared services.
The Philippines, with a large pool of English speakers and a cultural affinity with the United States, is developing as a strong second to India in the global outsourcing market.
The Philippine BPO industry is forecast to earn $11 billion and employing 900,000 people by the year 2010.
Vista Land, the country’s largest homebuilder, is the holding company of four business units ‑ Brittany Crown, Crown Asia, C&P Homes and Communities Philippines.
Brittany caters to the high-end market segment in Mega Manila; Crown Asia caters to the middle market; while Camella, the most widely recognized brand in housing, has been servicing the low-cost and the affordable housing segment in the Mega Manila area.
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