Malaysia's outsourcing industry to grow 20-25% in 2010

Revenue from the Malaysian outsourcing industry is likely to increase by 20 to 25 per cent this year from about $1.1 billion last year, according to the Chairman of Outsourcing Malaysia.

David Wong Nan Fay said here yesterday that the revenue would include contributions from information technology processing and the business process outsourcing (BPO) businesses.

"The main contributors will be from retail, healthcare, financial and insurance, oil and gas, supply chain services and engineering sectors," he told a media briefing after the release of a research report by the Association of the Computer and Multimedia Industry of Malaysia (Pikom), Outsourcing Malaysia and IDC Malaysia.

Wong said most of the services providers, who relied heavily on government incentives, had yet to achieve international competitiveness.

The research report, entitled "Strategic planning & tactical road maps for Malaysian organizations to become leading global outsourcing providers", revealed that Malaysia's outsourcing sector still lagged behind in several sectors.

"For instance, in the BPO segment, we are still on the mild-side as we have just created a foothold in outsourcing such as for human resources and customer care," it said, adding that the Philippines was already ahead of Malaysia with multiple outsourcing.