Home >
Articles >
2009 >
Real estate industry bullish, driven by BPO demand for office space
Real estate industry bullish, driven by BPO demand for office space
Try to visit Makati, Ortigas Center and other locations where a number
of outsourcing firms are located and chances are you may find the
following: convenience stores and restaurants are open for 24 hours,
public utility vehicles are plying their routes even during the ungodly
hours and construction of buildings is ongoing.
The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, which is considered as
one of the sunshine industries in the country, has created ripple
effects on the economy and on businesses.
Apart from providing 300,000 direct jobs for Filipinos and generating
US$4.9 billion revenues in 2007, it has improved the local economy by
creating a new segment of the population, composed of BPO workers in
their 20s, with high disposable income, much more than their
counterparts in other industries.
Restaurants, coffee shops, convenience stores, and even the public
transport system, are now serving BPO workers 24/7 since the nature of
their jobs requires them to deal with customers living in different
time zones. And this phenomenon has generated additional employment
opportunities for Filipinos leaving near the BPO sites.
Commissioner Monchito Ibrahim, chair of the Commission on Information
Technology, said in a previous interview with abs-cbnNews.com/Newsbreak
that for every job generated by the BPO industry, there are three
indirect jobs created in the indirect services like retail and the
transport sector.
One of the sectors that has benefited so much from this growth in
outsourcing is the real estate sector, mainly because of the huge
demand for office space by the BPO firms. Unlike other businesses that
need only two or three units for their operations, BPO companies rent
several floors or even an entire building to house their facilities and
operations.
The demand for office space by the BPO industry plus the economic
slowdown in the United States—where major clients of outsourcing firms
are—make experts in the real estate industry bullish over the
industry’s growth in the coming months and their optimism is not
entirely without a basis.
Benefiting from economic slowdown
BPO industry experts have been optimistic that the recession in the
United States and other major economies would mean more and more
companies trying to cut down costs by outsourcing more functions to
countries with cheaper labor, like India and the Philippines.
“It’s still cheaper to outsource than doing it there in the United
States,” said Jojo Uligan, executive director of the Contact Center
Association of the Philippines (CCAP) in an interview with
abs-cbnNews.com/Newsbreak. Call centers comprise 74 percent of the
US$4.9 billion revenues of the industry in 2007.
Source:
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/special-report/12/04/08/real-estate-industry-bullish-driven-bpo-demand-office-space
