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Cebu City has bragging rights as the no. 1 ?emerging global outsourcing destination? among the top 50 sites worldwide.
Don't take our word for it or that of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was impressed by the ?world class? looks of the Asiatown-IT Park in Lahug, where most Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms are located.
The ranking was given by a 2009 survey by IT industry publication Global Services and the strategic consultancy firm Tholons, which hailed Cebu City, for the second year, as No. 1 based on scale and quality of workforce, infrastructure, business catalyst, risk profile, cost and quality of life.
Following Cebu in second and third places are the cities of Shanghai and Beijing of the People?s Republic of China, which also retained the same ranking as last year?s.
Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and Krakow in Poland remained in fourth and fifth places.
The key word is ?emerging.? Cebu,whose BPO sector spurted to unprecedented growth in the past five years and now employs 50,000 workers, has what it takes to shoot up but what else does it lack to ?make it? to the top and stay there?
Consider two factors: reliable power supply and a critical mass of trained knowledge workers.
Of these two, Cebu isn't producing enough to achieve the tipping point of sustainable growth for BPOs.
Daily rotating brownouts have returned, a symptom of the thin energy reserves in Cebu that result in a 220-megawatt shortage when power plants have to shut down for maintenance work.
As managing director Joel Mari Yu of the Cebu Investment Promotions Center likes to thunder: ?A foreign investor will not tolerate a one-minute power interruption, much less one hour. Not even a few seconds.?
With 10 universities and colleges in Cebu, BPO recruiters are happy with the graduates they find, but lament that they need much more than what campuses are offering.
With a hiring rate of two percent to four percent of applicants, and the challenge of turnover after one to two years employment, the search for human talent extends to neighboring provinces just to fill seats of a hungry knowledge industry.
These two requirements will need to be addressed ? and fast.
While Cebu can crow about its ?potential,? it has to keep an eye too on the big picture.
Worldwide, the top global outsourcing sites according to Tholons are Indian cities - Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai - followed by Metro Manila or NCR (National Capital Region) in no. 4.
