Selling Philippines’ BPO Industry
For an industry that prides itself in following processes meticulously, the success of business process outsourcing (BPO) seems to have hinged on seemingly small measures that later turned out to be “game changers.”
One such policy shift that would later come to have massive positive implications on the industry was the government’s decision to allow individual buildings to be accredited by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza).
According to LiveIT CEO Fred Ayala, the government’s timely action to ease previously restrictive rules about incentives for investors was one factor that helped the BPO industry bloom.
Policy shift
“Before it [government] intervened, export processing zone rules provided incentives to investors only if they located in a specific industrial technopark,” he said.
“One of the key insights pushed by [the Department of Trade and Industry and the Board of Investments] was to suggest and push for changing those rules, so that the Peza framework could now allow building owners to designate and apply their buildings for Peza accreditation,” Ayala added.
The immediate result was the accreditation of the RCBC Plaza in Makati City as as the first Peza-certified building—a site that became a magnet for BPO firms despite the lingering effects back then of the 1997 East Asian financial crisis. Continue reading
