Bhutan wants a slice of BPO pie

New Delhi: Tiny Bhutan is getting ambitious. And most reasonably so.

With India's BPO industry emerging as a global leader, the Kingdom country is trying hard to learn a lesson or two from its neighbourhood and corner a share of the BPO pie.

In a grand initiative to push its BPO dream, Bhutan has allotted a startup budget of BTN 15 million this year to promote call centres in the country.

To begin with, the Ministry of Information and Communications is planning to set up three call centres in Thimphu, Phuentsholing and Gelephu.

"Call centres have immense potential for job creation for our unemployed youths," Bhutan’s national news paper Kuensel quoted director of the Department of Information Technology, Tenzin Choeda.

Over the past few years the BPO industry has emerged as a booming business worldwide, estimated to be worth a staggering $1,130 billion.

The Indian BPO industry is expected to employ more than one million people and export $25 billion worth of work by 2008.

Choeda says, "Private sector's input and participation were critical to make call centres workable in Bhutan."

So far private sector has shown little enthusiasm save one, despite government's promises of support in the form of setup cost, including equipment.

It's not easy to set up call centres in Bhutan. call centres rely heavily on cheaper, faster and better telecommunications, relayed via satellite or fibre optic cables.

Bhutan's only telecom company - Bhutan Telecom - charges about $167,000 for 1.0 mbps of international lease line, which is considered very costly as this means about $1,400 a month on connectivity circuit cost alone.

In India, a lease line of 1.0 mbps cost just about $3,000 a year.

Secondly, proficiency in English language is required as call centre customers are mostly from English-speaking countries.

Recently, the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources of Bhutan invited experts from Kolkata to select potential recruits for the planned call centres.

After the selection procedure, the experts were surprised at the poor standard of English among Bhutanese students.

Information communications skills, too, are in short supply. Call centres require communication specialists, among others, for backup services.

Bhutan's pool of a few hundred IT graduates a year is insufficient to meet the demand, said one IT graduate.

On the other hand, India has a big pool of about 300,000 IT engineering graduates every year, which gives it another big competitive edge.