CINDE Claims 7000 New Jobs from Service Enterprises
As Baxter Americas Services (BAS) inaugurated its center for financial services, the director of the Costa Rican Coalition for Development Initiatives, Emmanuel Hess, stated that different companies have announced that they will expand operations in Costa Rica. These companies focus on providing in house service to international offices or to customers in other countries, so speaking English is the primary requirement that their new employees must fill.
In the next 2 years, 5000 to 6000 jobs will be created from expansions by Sykes, IBM, Western Union, Maersk Americas, Procter and Gamble, Intel, Hewlett Packard, Alienware, Language Line and others. Currently there are 34 such operations here that generate 7000 jobs. Among them are call centers, corporate administrative processing centers, design and engineering centers, and software development centers.
The new Baxter center provides accounting services to Global Baxter International including general accounting, invoicing, payment processing, inventories, manufacturing operations and banking transactions.
The General Manager of Baxter Americas, Fernando Lujan, explained that four factors influenced the decision to locate the center in Costa Rica:
- Level of education along with the quality of professionals and technicians here
- Economic and social stability
- Competitive costs
- Geographic Location
The Presidente of Costa Rica, Abel Pacheco, spoke of the fact that Baxter chose Costa Rica over countries like India, Ireland, Mexico and Chile. “In this field, Costa Rica is actually 3rd in the world, only behind India and China in total jobs generated from outsourcing.” He emphasized that Costa Rica must increase its efforts even further, in the area of training and education, to ensure that companies continue to choose the country as a first option for these services.