India's inability to take its BPO business beyond the Tier-I cities could prove to be a key factor that will help Philippines in its drive to emerge as a major player in the offshoring industry.

At a recent conference, the Philippines Cyber Service Commissioner on the Commission on Information, Communication and Technology (CICT) Monchito Ibrahim said efforts to develop next wave of cities for handling BPO jobs would benefit investors as well as the overall economy of the country that does it.

India, which is ranked number one in the BPO industry, has only seven cities, making it an advantage for the Philippines if CICT will continue to encourage the development of next wave cities, where more BPO related investments can be located, he was quoted as saying by the website Sunstar.com.

If investors will locate in India, they will only have seven cities to choose from. Here in the Philippines, investors have 24 other cities to go to aside from Metro Manila. Moreover, Philippines is an easy market given the fact that English was spoken by a large chunk of its population now.

With Philippines boasting of a cost advantage over India in terms of labour costs, the BPO industry in the country could well be under stress if state governments do not work towards developing Tier-II and III cities like Coimbatore, Mysore, Hubli etc.