The Philippines has great potential to comer the sizeable European business process outsourcing market if industry organizations and the government will just do more promotions targeted at European BPO firms.

Henry Schumacher, vice president for external affairs at the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, said the country's BPO stakeholders were not doing enough to introduce the local BPO industry to the European market.

"When you talk to European companies, many of them don't know about the Philippine BPO sector.  The Philippines is a desired BPO location, but not many European companies know that," he said in a telephone interview.

"The (Business Processing Association of the Philippines) and the government should do more promotions in Europe.  If they do that, more companies will surely come here.  India is very active in doing this.  The Philippines should do the same," he added.

He said that of the country's total BPO revenues, European companies accounted for only 10 percent.

"We're just not getting the share (of European BPO revenues that we can potentially get).  The Philippines is just not promoting enough," he said.

According to XMG Global research analyst Ming Espineda, there is increasing demand for BPO services in European languages, particularly Spanish and German.

The country's European language-speaking talents, however, were very limited.

BPAP's 2011-2016 roadmap projected revenues from information technology and BPO services will hit 20 billion by 2016, which could even reach as high as $25 billion with stronger public-private partnership.

A $20-billion industry would provide employment to as many as 900,000 individuals, the road map showed, while a $25-billion industry would generate jobs for 1.3 million people.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer; Business; 02 November 2011