Economic Crisis boost service company growth
- Opportunity arise from need for U.S. companies to reduce costs
- New customers increased need for more employees
While electronic and automotive MNCs suffer from the downturn, service businesses are growing.
The opportunity arises mainly to companies engaged in Outsourcing of Services.
Timothy Scott, director of Azofras explained that in the U.S. and Europe the economic crisis is forcing companies to look into ways to be more efficient, so more companies are looking into outsourcing perform these tasks.
“Some companies expanded their businesses not despite, but because of the crisis,” said Francisco Alba, manager of Experian, which is dedicated to data analysis.
Last year there were 21 new multinational services corporations established in Costa Rica, a record year so far.
The sector is made up of 81 companies under the FTZ alone. These companies together employ more than 23,800 Costa Ricans.
Gabriela Llobet, director of CINDE, said the current economic situation provides exciting opportunity to attract foreign investment. “The country was consolidated as a destination that combines efficiency, quality and productivity”.
Christian Rodríguez, vice president of operations for Western Union, said that although the local growth is not caused by the crisis, but could benefit from it.
“Here the costs are more attractive than those of the Philippines. We could be more aggressive and provide services at lower costs to increase our share”explained.
Western Union came to Costa Rica 10 years ago, has 1,200 employees and provides technical services, accounting and administrative services into the US, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa in over 8 different languages.
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