SOFIA: Excellent IT and language skills have helped Bulgaria’s outsourcing sector boom, raising hopes that it could prop up the badly stagnating economy of the EU’s poorest country.
After a timid start 15 years ago, the Balkan country is now a hub for information technology and back-office outsourcing.
As well as call centres, firms offering software and web development, data services and technical support are attracting business from foreign companies finding it cheaper to sub-contract abroad.
Growth in the sector has rocketed at up to 25 percent annually in recent years, helping Bulgaria’s economy to rebound to growth of 0.9 percent in 2013 after shrinking 5.0 percent in 2009.
The 22,000 people employed in outsourcing generated up to three percent of Bulgaria’s gross domestic product in 2013, according to the Bulgarian Outsourcing Association, with turnover of more than one billion leva ($685m).
The industry profits from top-quality IT specialists, as well as the wide range of over 20 languages other than English taught in Bulgarian high schools and universities.
“Bulgaria ranks third worldwide in the number of certified software engineers and first in the number of IT specialists per capita,” Deputy Economy Minister Krasin Dimitrov told a recent outsourcing conference in Sofia.
Excellent Internet and telecommunication services, as well as a pre-crisis surge in high-quality office real estate, have also contributed to the boom.
According to outsourcing association chairman Stefan Bumov, the burgeoning industry has the potential to employ two or even three times more people — a promising prospect in a country where more than a quarter of youngsters are unemployed.
“The demand for this type of services is set to grow and we could double -- and why not even triple -- the industry in the next two to three years,” Bumov said.
AFP
