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Sri Lanka : Sri Lanka, a hidden gem for outsourcing - A T Kearney [TendersInfo (India)](TendersInfo (India) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sri Lanka is, in many ways, a hidden gem for outsourcing, said A T Kearney, a leading global management consultant, which ranked the island 21st among its global services location index. India, with its vast experience and talent pool, topped the global rankings, followed by China and Malaysia. The depth of Sri Lanka's existing IT, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) operations often comes as a surprise to people, the consultants said during an overview of the market. Sri Lanka s outsourcing industry covers everything from large multinationals to innovative local start-ups, providing automated application testing and infrastructure outsourcing, high-end Research and Development, enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, the latest cloud and open-source applications, transcription services and call centers, complex financial research, and legal advice. Sri Lanka aims to achieve 75 percent IT literacy levels by 2015 and is training 50,000 teachers to meet this target. The report said Sri Lanka continued to show sturdy economic growth and attracted foreign investments even during the decades long ethnic conflict that ended in May 2009. Over the past decade, Sri Lanka attracted 4 billion dollars in FDI inflows, twice what it attracted in the three preceding decades. While FDI inflows suffered as a result of the global downturn in 2009, they have recovered quickly and are expected to have reached record levels in 2011. Recent sovereign bond issues have also been heavily oversubscribed, reflecting investor confidence. Sri Lanka's infrastructure is generally far superior to that found in other low-cost countries. Being a relatively small capital city, Colombo has far less congestion and pollution than most other fast-growing capitals. Moving within the city is much easier than in Cairo, Dhaka, Manila, or Mumbai; and the country is expanding and improving links between cities, building a new airport, a port, an IT Park and other facilities in the deep south of Hambantota. Sri Lanka is uniquely positioned to compete in knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) because of its numerous certified professionals, including accountants, lawyers, doctors, and architects. About 50 percent of students earning higher education degrees are trained in technical and business disciplines. Sri Lanka has already carved out a niche in financial and accounting outsourcing (FAO) thanks to its strong talent base. The country boasts the second-highest number of Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) students in the world (see figure). Thousands of students also pursue qualifications from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT). (c) 2012 Euclid Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |