PALAYAN CITY—Malaysian trade and industry experts and local government officials inaugurated on Wednesday the P1.5-billion business process outsourcing hub and government center.
The hub is expected to pump-prime Nueva Ecija’s economy by generating at least 18,000 jobs and make the province the latest “next wave” city outside the traditional urban hubs across the country.
Tansri Azmil, chairman of Malaysian conglomerate Alloy MTD based in Kuala Lumpur, which bankrolled the project, led the inauguration of the BPO building along with Malaysian Ambassador Dato Razlan Abdul Rashid, Malaysian Trade Minister Dato Sri Mustapa Mohamed, and Bases Conversion and Development Authority Chairman Vince Dizon.
Mayor Adrianne Mae Cuevas said the 37,500-square meter BPO building and the government center in Barangay Singalat will serve as the perfect template for the Duterte administration’s pursuit of bringing government closer to the people.
She said the hub will house at least 12 government agencies under one roof in a state-of-the-art, air-conditioned one-stop-shop setting, where Novo Ecijanos can secure passports, licenses and other government-issued documents.
“These projects are just some of the signs of the city’s readiness to take on the challenges of leading the way for Nueva Ecija’s path to progress,” she said.
Cuevas said the city government is coordinating with the various national government agencies to relocate their operations to the new city center.
These are the Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of Labor and Employment, Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Information and Communication Technology, Department of Education, and frontline agencies such as the Government Service Insurance System, Social Security System, National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine Statistics Authority, and PhilHealth.
Former Nueva Ecija governor Aurelio Umali, husband of incumbent Gov. Czarina Umali, said the province is gearing up for the information technology-BPO industry.
The sitting governor when the facility started construction in 2015, he said the province has made significant strides to becoming a next wave city, a reference to new locations for BPO companies seeking to expand their operations outside IT-established hubs such as Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Clark.
“We are the first province in the Philippines to come out with a Public Private Partnership Code as an incentive for potential IT locators,” he said, adding the provincial government is also looking to develop a portion of the old Capitol site in Cabanatuan City into an IT-BPO hub.
The Language Skills Institute set up by the provincial government is also training Novo Ecijanos to communicate in various foreign languages, Umali added.
Two more buildings with 2,000 seating capacity each will be erected in the area, with commercial spaces to service the BPO workers’ needs and a 75-room hotel. All four buildings are designed to have high speed internet connectivity through fiber optic lines and a stable power supply.
Cuevas urged Novo Ecijano BPO workers outside the province to come home and be a part of the development of the city and the province.
Rizza Lao, Alloy MTD public relations officer and marketing consultant, said they are upbeat about the project because it is away from Metro Manila, where competition among BPOs is tight.
“As you can see now, Metro Manila is heavily congested and BPOs are engaged in cutthroat competition that they are pirating call center agents from each other,” she said.
Lao allayed fears the BPO industry here might not prosper because of manpower problems, geographic isolation, and the failure of an earlier BPO firm in Cabanatuan City.
The city government has been trying to recruit up to 15,000 call center agents to staff the hub.
Alloy MTD said the two BPOs together can accommodate 5,000 call center agents. With three shifts, the centers will require 15,000 call center agents, each of whom stands to earn a minimum starting salary of P15,000 a month.
Alloy MTD is an infrastructure giant in Asia. It operates in 13 countries, including the United States and China, and has been credited with building world-class government centers patterned after Putrajaya, a planned city and federal administrative center 25 kilometers south of Kuala Lumpur.
Made up of a network of open spaces and wide boulevards, Putrajaya was constructed in 1995 at a cost of $8.1 billion, the biggest project in Malaysia and one of the biggest in Southeast Asia.
MTD has invested P10 billion in the country, having also bankrolled the construction of the P3.9-billion, 36-kilometer South Luzon Expressway and the P2.5-billion Calabarzon Regional Government Center, dubbed the “Complete City.”