Property giant Ayala Land Inc. (ALI), MLT Investments Ltd. and Filipinas Investments Ltd. signed yesterday an agreement to jointly develop a business processing office (BPO) building in Makati.
The agreement also calls for the purchase of the existing People-Support building, currently fully-owned by ALI.
MLT Investments Ltd. is an investment arm of Goldman Sachs, a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high net-worth individuals.
Filipinas Investments Ltd., on the other hand, is an affiliate of Capmark Asia, the Asian operations of Capmark Financial Group Inc., which is headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania, USA .
Capmark is a real estate finance company with three core businesses: lending and mortgage banking, investments and funds management and loan servicing.
The Asian operations of Cap-mark comprises more than 200 employees in seven offices in China, Japan, Philippines, and Taiwan and is actively engaged in the lending, real estate equity investment, special situations; investment, primary/master servicing, and special servicing businesses.
"With the foregoing investments, ALI and its partners expect to benefit from opportunities arising from the growing demands of the BPO industry in the Philippines . Second to India , the Philippines has established itself as an attractive location for multinational BPO companies. The collaboration of these three companies, with their extensive experience in real estate development and investment management, should provide access to a broad range of opportunities," ALI said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.
Through the combined efforts of the Department of Trade and Industry and key BPO players, the Philippines is poised to capture a bigger share of the global outsourcing market, particularly call center services. BPO is thecountry's fastest-growing sector and studies show that it will be a multi-billion dollar industry in the next few years.
BNP Paribas Securities, in its special report on the industry, said it expects the Philippines to benefit from global outsourcing, thanks to its huge supply of cheap labor, English proficiency, telecommunications infrastructure and tax incentives.
The business, which has doubled in size per annum in the country over the past three years, is projected to grow from $173 million in 2002 to $10 billion in seven years, contributing as much as 13 percent of GDP (gross domestic product).
The Philippines hosts about 200 call centers which employ some 32,000 Filipinos. The pool of operators fills in 20,000 seats in various call centers in Metro. Manila , Cebu and other regions in the country. About 80 percent of call centers here are from the US.