RP call centers seen to rake in $960M this year

The country’s information technology-enabled services industry, led by call centers, is expected to rake in some $960 million in revenues this year, up 50 percent from the $640 million it generated last year, according to Sen. Mar Roxas, chairman of the Congressional Oversight Committee on the Electronic Commerce Law.

"Just to have an idea as to how fast and big the industry has grown, it is now generating foreign exchange equal to over 10 percent of the aggregate amount of dollars remitted by our overseas workers each year," Roxas pointed out.

Roxas said the call center sector alone is projected to fully employ 96,000 Filipinos by yearend, an increase of 50 percent from 64,000 last year.

Call center seats are expected to hit 60,000 by yearend, up 33 percent from the 40,000 seats at the end of 2004.

Five years ago, the call center sector had only 1,500 seats, 2,400 employees and posted only $24 million in revenues.

Roxas, meanwhile, urged call centers to strive to innovate in order to cope with the growing global demand for their services.

"If call centers are having problems finding qualified full-time customer service representatives or agents, then they should start tapping the part-time labor market," Roxas said.

The senator said call centers would not have a problem getting qualified part-time employees willing to work for at least four hours daily.

"We have more than enough college graduates that are either unemployed, or partially employed and still actively looking for more work," Roxas said.

Call centers are now aggressively looking to recruit some 3,000 agents and 300 supervisors every month. However, at present, less than five percent of call center job applicants get hired.

Roxas led the first IT-enabled services mission to the United States in 2001, when he was still secretary of trade and industry.

The mission paved the way for the entry into the Philippines of several US-based investors in IT-enabled services, including call centers and other business processing outsourcing (BPO) contractors.

In BPO, foreign-based firms, in order to reduce operating costs, turn over many back-office functions to contractors in offshore destinations such as the Philippines.