BPO firms employ 41,000 in Iloilo

ILOILO, PHILIPPINES — Roughly 41,000 individuals were provided jobs in 103 business process outsourcing (BPO) firms in Iloilo City, according to Joeven Tansi, executive director of the Iloilo Federation of Information Technology (I-FIT).

“We have a strong infrastructure backbone (internet), as manifested by multiple landing sites from big telecommunications, and we have the availability of qualified talents with natural accent. Iloilo (City) is accessible to the world from the eyes of the investors,” Tansi said.

He said an additional 12,000 workers are still needed in the region’s BPO sector. He noted that this figure is still “understated” since only seven BPO firms could submit their documents for their needed additional workforce.

However, Iloilo has to work double time to prepare its human resources capacity. An old study showed that the estimated carrying capacity of Iloilo for BPO for 2012 to 2014 was 50,000, Tansi added.

With the current employment and the demand, he said then it means that Iloilo is already “fully saturated”.

Tansi called on the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to hold training for potential BPO workers.