Egypt sees potential in its ITO and BPO markets

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (image source: World Economic Forum)

Egypt plans to increase the size of its ITO and BPO markets, saying that the country’s strong growth potential and qualified human capital is attracting more foreign investors interested in IT outsourcing.

“Egypt provides many unique advantages as a location for BPO and ITO to Europe and the Middle East. What sets Egypt as a favorite for investments in the sector include its sizable talent supply, structurally low cost of operations, quality and scalable infrastructure, conductive business environment and proven industry track record”, Amin Khaireldin, senior advisor and board member of Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) told senior representatives of companies at the hosted seminar NASSCOM 2010 in Egypt.

According to ITIDA, Egypt benefits from a large presence of multinationals and regional IT companies in the region, with 15,000 direct export oriented professionals, 22,000 for domestic business accounts, over 300,000 active bloggers and over 50,000 indirect jobs supported by the industry.

Ricardo Langwieder-Gorner, director of business development EMEA at Stream Global Services, highlighted the attractive costs structure of Egypt, which is lower compared to India in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

Egypt has massively invested in IT infrastructure over the past years, delivering various bandwidth, educational and telecommunications projects to establish itself as “a hub for innovation, research, cyber security and cross-border collaboration”, added the ITIDA representative.

The country will further look into enhancing the Internet penetration in Egypt, he said.

Companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Vodafone, Orange, Mahindra Satyam, Teleperformance, Wipro, SQS, Valeo, Alcatel have already opened offices in Egypt’s Smart Village, a 600-acre technology business park in Cairo.

The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) is a governmental entity affiliated to Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, responsible for growing and developing Egypt’s position as a leading global outsourcing location, by attracting foreign direct investment to the industry and maximizing the exports of IT services and applications.