By Tim Rogers
Nicaragua hopes a new call center will attract business from companies wishing to outsource.
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Trying to establish a toehold in a fast-growing industry and polish the country's image, the Nicaraguan government has opened a call center in a new $4 million building -- without a single client.
The glass building unveiled Wednesday, called Invercasa, has been installed with state-of-the-art voice and data transfer technology for up to 450 operators, and officials hope it will become the flagship call center for all of Central America.
Although the building, which marks Nicaragua's arrival in the field of outsourcing, doesn't yet have any clients, the government says it's talking with five or six major international companies that have expressed interest in expanding into Nicaragua.
The government's investment promotion agency, ProNicaragua, has said it expects operators will be answering phones in Invercasa within three months.
From there, the sector will only continue to grow, says Juan Carlos Pereira, executive director of ProNicaragua.
''If we do this right, we should create 3,000 jobs in the next few years, and could create tens of thousands of jobs in the future,'' Pereira said.
As more multinational companies outsource their business processing, Central America has become an attractive ''nearshore'' option to compete with India and other offshore destinations.
From Guatemala to Panama, some 21,000 Central Americans work in 174 call centers; their work includes answering customer questions for credit card holders, data entry and company payrolls.
The outsourcing of business processing in the region is expected to grow by 38 percent in the next 24 months, according to the 2007 Central America Call Center Report, published by Zagada.
Though Nicaragua employs the fewest contact-center operators in Central America, with only 500 jobs, it hopes to be a main player in the region's future growth. And the first step for a country with an historic image of turmoil was to build the facilities in hopes of luring the clients later.
''This is like when you want tourists to come, but you don't have any hotels; if we want investment, we have to have the installations,'' said Ramón Lacayo, executive secretary of the National Corp. of Free Trade Zones.
COUNTRY ONLINE
Until late last year, when Nicaragua finally connected to the Arcos submarine fiber-optic cable connecting Central America to the United States, the technological infrastructure did not exist for the country to compete in the voice and data transfer industry.
Now that Nicaragua is connected, the country is optimistic about its chances of emerging as a regional leader. Not only are salaries 30 percent lower in Nicaragua than in neighboring Costa Rica and Panama -- $350-$400 a month versus $600-$700 -- but other countries in the region have started to run out of qualified English-speaking operators, Pereira says.
ProNicaragua hopes to avoid that problem. Two years ago, the organization started nicasearch.com to identify Nicaragua's bilingual labor pool.
More than 4,500 applicants have signed up, 2,000 of whom have been interviewed so far, with 500 certified for language and with complete background checks.
And with 100,000 more university students, the pool of certified bilingual operators is expected to grow.
`A GOOD JOB'
''One of the first things graduating students like me want is to get a good job in order to reward all the sacrifice of our families during our years of study,'' Loxzan César Cárcamo, 22, said in labored yet clear English. ``It is so hard and painful when we finish five years of study and we cannot find a good job, but today my questions are answered with this contact center.''
Officials in Nicaragua and Central America believe they also can compete with India on a political level; U.S. companies and consumers realize jobs created in Central America will curb illegal emigration to the United States.
Some even claim that because of the number of Hispanics already living in the United States, clients there might be more accustomed to hearing English with a Hispanic accent, versus an Indian accent.
''Lots of times when you call a 1-800 number, an Indian answers speaking an English that we don't understand, but the English [spoken by Hispanics] we understand,'' said Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños.
Source: Miami Herald
