APAC plans expansion at Leyte ICT Park

By Provincial Media Relations Center
November 14, 2009

TACLOBAN CITY  –  APAC Customer Services Inc., the call center locator at the Leyte ICT Park has recently asked the provincial government of Leyte for another 2,500 square meter office space for its expansion plans.

This was revealed by Leyte Governor Carlos Jericho Petilla during the recent Provincial Development Council Meeting which he chairs held at the Governor’s Hall with majority of local chief executives in attendance together with municipal and local planners.

The governor said plans are currently being laid on the table as the provincial government is set provide more space for APAC’s expansion to ensure that job generation would still cascade here in the province and in the region.

“APAC approached me two weeks ago for more office space for their expansion and if not they would expand in another province,” Gov. Petilla said.

The governor disclosed the province immediately has to go straight to the drawing board for the ICT Park’s growth to ensure that the job market APAC’s expansion would create would still benefit jobseekers from Leyte and Eastern Visayas provinces.

APAC presently occupies the former Leyte Academic center (LAC) Gymnasium that sits on a 3,000-square meter site and was turned into a high-end call center facility when APAC located and finally opened early this year.

APAC officials have earlier revealed that their Leyte site would only be the start of the company's five-year expansion in the country where 80% of its growth will be in the provinces.

With the 2,500 square meters additional office space APAC is asking could house at least 600 more call center agents, Gov. Petilla revealed.

The governor added his talks with some top officials of the business process outsourcing in the country reveals that BPO and ICT business would still be brisk this year despite the global economic slowdown.

“We see the need to capitalize on the bigger growth of the ICT industry in the province,” Gov. Petilla told local chief executives.

Leyte, he said, has become an alternative hub for provincial expansion of BPO and ICT players because of its existing fiber optic connections, a good education system with 5,000 to 8,000 graduates every year, and incentives from the local government.

The BPO and ICT Industry is known as the “Sunrise Industry” of the country, due to the fact that this industry has brought in millions of dollars in investment from foreign companies, while creating several thousand jobs in the process.