SRI LANKA RURAL SECTOR EYED BY GLOBAL BPO SERVICE PROVIDERS.

COLOMBO, Oct 5 Asia Pulse - Sri Lanka's rural economy can take a slice of India's 12 billion dollar Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry by catering to the bottom of the pyramid customers who look at costs over optimum service, a foreign investor said.

"India does about US$12 billion of knowledge base process work; 10 per cent of that is a big amount for us," Raj Amirthanayagam, managing director of Revanalytics Solutions Inc., a Canadian technology company, said.

"They can make 2,000 rupees (US$17.42) an hour; that's what's paid in other countries for quality processed work."

India is one of the largest BPO operators in the world, but the boom in the Indian economy has increased operating costs in cities due to higher rent expenses. The ICT penetration rate in rural India remains poor.

Now Indian BPOs are looking at specialized back office services such as accounts, legal, insurance and technology-related work, which generates higher income.

Sri Lanka has great potential in the BPO sector as the government has invested substantially setting up 'Nenasela' information technology training centre's, Amirthanayagam said.

"There is a big demand for jobs in the lower end of the ICT industry."

Sri Lankan-born Amirthanayagam said opportunities are available for the lower end of the BPO industry such as data entry which has got too expensive to operate in cities.

BPO companies operate from cities due to infrastructure bottlenecks in the rural provinces such as lack of high speed internet lines.

But in rural Sri Lanka IT access has improved after the government opened 'Naneselas' ICT kiosks that provide high-speed internet links.

"This is ideal for graduates who don't want to leave their homes," Amirthanayagam said.

Sri Lankan students are very talented and if trained and developed can provide BPO services with more value addition, said Sankar Krishnan, managing director of US-based outsourcing company Adventity, another firm keen to do BPO work in the island.

"We will be teaching skills which will be done better in the rural sector," Krishnan said. "We will train them to use the systems."

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