The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry has vowed to work with property developers to address the sector’s demand for office spaces, a move seen to be crucial to lower rentals.

Oscar Sanez, Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. (PHILEXPORT) trustee for the information technology (IT) services sector, said the sector is establishing demand projections quarterly to determine the period when outsourcing firms could face a supply crunch or oversupply.

“In a situation where there is oversupply and not enough demand occurring, we could work with property developers to either defer their projects to the time that you can get optimal price or advance them if they can to meet some anticipated demand short-term,” he said.

Through managing supply and demand in the office property area, Sanez noted that the BPO sector could properly prepare and do some corrective actions to meet them.”

He said the industry is keen to decongest Metro Manila, thus is looking at new areas for growth like Clark, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, Davao, Bacolod, Cavite and Laguna which are among the identified next wave cities.

“We are starting to build those office sizes in partnership with the property developers and managers and the Commission on Information and Communications Technology who are owners of the government program on the Super Regions Cyber Corridor,” Sanez added.

He said this effort will ease up the crunch in the usual sites and the industry starts seeing a decline in office rentals.

“In fact, we are starting to see that. So we end up in a situation where we only not benefit from the lower office rentals but we actually end up in more ideal office locations because these are more centrally located, better planned with more support facilities available to the workers,” he further said.

Sanez estimated the industry will need 750,000 workers by 2011 from the present around 380,000. The BPO is optimistic they will hit the $12-billion revenue target by the end of the decade from 2008's $6.1 billion.

“The only difference is that, we are delaying that target by a year. We are now seeing that $12-billion target is still achievable but we will hit it in 2011, and not 2010."

Sanez stressed that the $12-billion revenue goal was set by industry players before the global financial crisis happened.

“And there was a period of time this year starting fourth quarter of last year when there were stopped, delayed or deferred projects. So we have seen a slowdown in the growth,” he added.

“But we are still growing. We grew 26 percent last year and we are growing maybe 20 percent this year,” noting the $12-billion target will enable the industry to contribute close to 10 percent to the country’s gross domestic product from only four percent three years ago.