By Justine Irish D. Tabile, Reporter
THE IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) said it is still evaluating the potential impact of the proposed Keep Call Centers in America act.
“It talks about US call centers so I really do not know who that will affect with the way that it is worded,” IBPAP President and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan R. Madrid said on the sidelines of an ECCP AI Forum.
“We need to understand it a little bit more. I think I know what their intention is. But I don’t know the likelihood of this passing. Obviously it is something we are monitoring, and with the way that it is worded, we need to study it more,” he added.
Introduced in the US Senate last month, the bill aims to impose restrictions on US firms outsourcing their call center operations.
In particular, the bill, if signed into law, will render employers outsource call center work overseas ineligible for new federal grants or guaranteed loans.
“I am speaking to the American Chamber of Commerce; we are discussing it and we will see. But we are all aligned on how we will manage this,” he said.
“While the bill is still in the early stages of the legislative process, we remain committed to keeping our stakeholders informed, providing timely guidance, and ensuring that the Philippine IT-BPM industry is well-positioned to adapt and thrive in a changing regulatory environment,” he said.
Philippine Institute for Development Studies Senior Research Fellow John Paolo R. Rivera said that the proposed bill poses a “clear risk to the Philippine IT-BPM industry, especially in the call center segment.”
“By restricting access to US federal grants, contracts, and loans for companies that offshore customer service jobs or do not properly disclose them, the bill raises the regulatory and reputational costs for offshore operations,” he said via Viber .
He said the Philippine industry has been evolving beyond voice-based call centers, which are less exposed to call center-specific legislation.
“We now see strong growth in high-value services such as finance, healthcare information management, legal process outsourcing, software development, and data analytics,” he said.
With the US Senate’s proposal to bring back call centers to the US, he said that the Philippines must continue to move up the value chain to reduce exposure to such policies.
“While the bill underscores vulnerabilities in our call center export model, it also reinforces the importance of accelerating investment in high-value, tech-enabled services where the Philippines can maintain global competitiveness,” he added.
Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) Chief Economist Michael L. Ricafort said the bill could be “a potential drag on future growth of the industry.”
For this year, the IT-BPM industry is expected to generate $40 billion in export revenue and increase its workforce to 1.9 million.
Mr. Ricafort said US firms’ bigger savings in outsourcing work to the Philippines could be a brake on any companies reshoring call center operations to the US.
“The service quality of Philippine contact centers, the number 1 in the world, at a much lower cost than in the US, would remain a competitive advantage to service the customers of global companies,” he said.
“Still, the bill presents a threat to call centers in the US, as it is more expensive, and in the Philippines if there are any additional charges or taxes by the US,” he added.
He also said that the bill has the potential to increase the use of artificial intelligence in the call center industry as a cheaper alternative.
Earlier this year, IBPAP said that 70% of its members are North American, including IT-BPM firms that have North American clients.