Agreement on co-operation in supporting the business services sector

24.11.2009

The co-operation agreement was signed on November 20th in Warsaw by the recently established Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL), the Minister of Economy and the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency.

The SSC/BPO (Shared Services Centres/ Business Process Outsourcing) sector has been dynamically developing in Poland. In fact, the current economic climate makes more and more companies create their own shared services centres and outsource business processes by external partners. At the moment the SSC/BPO sector (which is estimated to cover around 200-300 companies) gives employment to over 40.000 people and the upcoming 2-3 years may see the number go up to 70.000.

The sector’s significant growth created the need to initiate a dialog and to start co-operation among the 16 biggest companies active in the field. In May this year the first association - Association of Business Service Leaders ABSL - representing interests of the sector in Poland was created. - We want to create a common platform for discussion, deepen co-operation with public authorities and help understand the nature of our sector - said Jacek S. Levernes, President of ABSL, on a daily basis, managing director of HP Global Business Centre in Wroclaw. Among ABSL members there are corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Capgemini, Thomson Reuters, UBS, Franklin Templeton, Geoban or Infosys and other centres that deliver services internally to their own companies (SSC) or provide similar services for external clients (BPO).

Rafał Baniak, the Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Economy ensured that all BPO investment projects which wait for government aid are regularly examined. PAIiIZ President Sławomir Majman added that supporting investors constitutes one of the Agency's top priorities. - I declare that PAIiIZ will lay an even greater emphasis on reinvestment support. President Majman stressed Poland’s advantages which clearly show that the country is a good destination for projects in the business services sector. - Poland has more higher education establishment than China. Every tenth student in Europe comes from Poland. And it is exactly in the well-prepared personnel that the country’s real attractiveness can be found. Currently the top 15 BPO localisations list includes four Polish cities. All today’s signatories of the agreement will make all the necessary effort to increase the number of such cities in Poland. Jarosław Czarzasty, director at Thomson Reuters observed that the number of locations prepared to accommodate BPO investments worldwide is on the increase. - For us it is important that Poland continues to be an important investment location for services projects. We want the sector to develop in the country.

This sector has good development prospects because SSC and BPO projects usually translate into additional savings for companies, valuable workplaces for qualified people in the whole country and paths for employees to pursue professional career. (PAIiIZ/ABSL)