Egypt has been ranked among the best 18 business service centre locations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa region (EMEA), according to a recent report by the Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL).
ABSL is a leading international non-profit organisation that connects global and local companies which set up their global service centers in Central and Eastern European countries, according to a statement issued by the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) on Sunday.
The report, titled EMEA’s Business Services Landscape, brought into focus a number of factors that strengthened Egypt’s position as a world-class destination for business services including its very large, well-educated workforce, and the highly-competitive operating costs it offers.
The report also highlighted the availability of talent in Egypt as an edge that allows it to set itself apart from other nearshore destinations by offering companies the possibility to implement service centres on a large scale.
“I’m thrilled that Egypt is the only non-European country to be listed in the report. We have a solid plan in place that guarantees the next wave of growth reaches 225,000 as total employment by 2022,” CEO of ITIDA Hala El-Gohary said
Egypt has established itself as a prime location for business and IT services for global operations serving 100 countries. The government pro-actively supports the sector, ranging from investments in talent and infrastructure to incentives and support to foreign investors, according to the statement.
The market in Egypt is experiencing a shift in its services portfolios, the report confirmed, highlighting the shift by companies from multilingual contact centres to high-value niche services such as product development, research and development.
“We are constantly observing the shared services sector in the EMEA region and are astonished at the pace at which some locations are developing. More and more centers where new investments are being opened increase year by year, this is Egypt in particular,” ABSL Strategy and Business Development Director Paweł Panczyj said.
He added that with more than 100 centers, Cairo is the main location for the industry, but increasingly companies are also setting up in Alexandria.
According to the report, the US and the UK account for more than 30 percent of the countries of origin of export-oriented business service centres in Egypt.
It also showed that software development (62 percent), customer service (29 percent), and IT helpdesk (24 percent) are the major types of services delivered by the centres in Egypt.
