GEORGE TOWN, July 31 — Penang's development arm, Penang Development Corporation (PDC), signed a RM1.3 billion joint venture agreement with Singapore-based Temasek and Economic Development Innovation Singapore (EDIS) for the development of a BPO Prime Project here.
In the collaboration, the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) Prime Project will be built on 6.8 acres of land where the PDC office is currently located in Bayan Baru.
“This collaboration is a testimony of the confidence and trust that the international business community have in the future of Penang,” said Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.
Lim, who witnessed the signing ceremony, said the BPO Prime will represent the prime business hub in Malaysia's Multimedia Super-Corridor (MSC) at Penang Cyber City 1 covering a minimum of 1.6 million sq ft.
The construction of the project is expected to start in 2016 and complete by 2019.
Lim said the project will fill in the gaps where there is a shortage of Grade A office space for Shared Services Outsourcing (SSO) and BPO.
“The SSO sector has achieved rapid growth over the years and Malaysia has consecutively been ranked the world's third SSO destination by global management consulting firm AT Kearney since 2004 after India and China,” he said.
In Penang, the cumulative investments for SSO companies with MSC status between 2009 and 2014 have reached RM4.073 billion.
The SSO sector here is also providing more than 8,000 high income jobs to locals and serving both regional and global markets.
Lim said the numbers are expected to increase by 60 per cent in the next three years.
The planned BPO Prime will create new cluster economic development in BPO, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) and Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and also create 4,000 high income and quality jobs.
BPO Prime's high value added services hub will include customer operations, data processing, back office administration, accounting, technical support, transcription, software development, IT consultancy and disaster recovery services.
Temasek is an investment company based in Singapore with a S$266 billion (RM628.6 billion) investment portfolio as at March 31 while EDIS is also headquartered in Singapore with offices in Germany and US.
