Friday, February 01, 2008
A looming recession in the United States is expected to boost the Philippines’ booming property market and its outsourcing industries, real-estate consultants CB Richard Ellis said Thursday.
“We see no end to the demand for commercial real estate,” CB Richard Ellis Philippines Chairman Rick Santos told a news conference.
“We haven’t seen this much interest since pre-1997 [before the Asian crisis],” he said.
A report by the company said that while the call-center industry in the Philippines may feel the brunt of a US recession, it will be offset by an increase in the business process outsourcing (BPO) business as US companies increase their outsourcing of back office operations. (See related story page B1.)
Manila and other major Philippine cities are seeing building booms in office and housing to cater to the large pool of accountants, engineers, architects, and animation professionals that give US firms a lower-cost option.
Outsourcing companies in the Philippines project an annual growth of 40 percent to about $7 billion this year, from $5 billion in 2006, despite the peso’s appreciation, it added.
The company’s country vice-chairman, Joey Radovan, said outsourcing firms now account for more than 60 percent of occupancy of the three million square meters of office space in the Makati City, the financial district of Metro Manila.
Some 613,804 square meters of new commercial space are to be completed this year across the metropolitan area, and all are committed to tenants through pre-leasing, the report said. 
-- AFP
[ Published by : ManilaTimes.net ] February 1, 2008
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