And in other news emanating from the vexations of empire, the proposed "Keep Call Centres in America Act" could result in major job losses here in Belize.
There are approximately 18,000 call centre workers employed across Belize, and with the recent proposed legislation which will be put before the Senate, it leaves many to wonder what will become of Belize's BPO industry.
Government disclosed today that In February of this year, a contract was signed between the IDB and a consultancy firm based in Spain, to prepare Belize's Global Digital Services Investment Policy.
And later in April another project to Enhance Belize's GDS Industry was signed by a UK based consultancy. This was all detailed in a release issued by the Ministry of investment today, urging the BPO industry and stakeholders to "keep abreast of these programmes and to be prepared to take advantage of the initial 50 spaces for training over the coming months."
We spoke with a few of those call center stakeholders today and they assured us that the industry is strong and it would be too expensive to run some of these call centers in the US. They claimed that it would cost 3 if not 4 times more what it would cost to run in Belize.
Sab Badee, CEO, Global Com
"Just to clarify this is an act that has been trying to get pushed over for the last 15 years and it has not been getting passed but realistically speaking even if the act got passed I know for a fact my company and a lot of the BPO's here, this might affect.02 to.05 % of our industry. What it is basically entailing is just the companies that are using call centres abroad which basically almost all of the companies out there, outsourcing is needed 100% it is not an industry that is going to survive in America and at the end of the day they just need to basically present It to say publicly we are using another company outside of America for it and it makes it more difficult for them to get accepted for federal government loans. Federal grants and government loans and the majority of companies that we deal with also don't need the federal grants and the federal funding so again it doesn't really affect much all it is to spark fear. What I highly recommend is our companies here in Belize are extremely strong, we are very good at what we do and it is a talent that we have it is a skill set we have it is instilled in us and we are great at it. And economically there is always going to be a demand for this, and we have the supply for it also so on a world market we have bigger fish to fry than what is coming from an act that is being proposed far away from being approved."
Government says that the studies have determined the most in-demand and currently lacking skills in Belize are cybersecurity, data analysis, User Interface and User Experience, and cloud engineering. They say a curriculum addressing these skill sets is currently being developed, with training for 50 BPO professionals scheduled to launch in the coming months.
