Apac drives outsourcing growth

The outsourcing market in the Asia Pacific grew substantially in 2007, according to the latest TPI Index from sourcing advisory firm TPI, reports BusinessStandard.

Outsourcing in Asia Pacific saw its second consecutive year of strong growth and showed an increase in demand across all measures.

Though the number of contracts signed in 2007 grew by just 4%, the total contract value increased 30% year-on-year from $9.9 billion to $12.8 billion.

Egypt's contact centre industry remains bullish about its ability to attract global customers, despite service interruptions in the past two weeks, reports ArabianBusiness.

The Egyptian call centre business, which Datamonitor predicts will employ 25 000 agents by 2010, suffered from disruption to international voice and data services, following the severing of two undersea cables off the coast of Egypt on 2 February.

The cable breaks attracted widespread media attention, leading to concerns that the growing outsourcing industry, ranked number 12 worldwide by AT Kearney, would suffer a loss of confidence from international customers.

Despite talks of a possible slowdown in technology budgets, the outsourcing of IT services contracts is likely to see a 7% growth in the current year, reports EconomicTimes.

TPI, a sourcing advisory firm, said: "We project around 7% annualised growth in 2008." In 2007, the total contract value of outsourcing contracts above $25 million touched $80.4 billion.

According to TPI India MD Siddharth Pai, any likely recession in the US economy may have certain short-term impacts, but will prove beneficial for the Indian players in the long-run as companies will be looking at further cost savings.