NEWS | Wednesday, 05 March 2008

200 new jobs announced

The Minister for Investment, Industry and Information Technology Austin Gatt met representatives from ‘Besedo’ who announced the opening of a 200-employee facility in Malta.
Besedo is based in Stockholm and handles for its clients the outsourcing of business processes. It has announced it is setting up a centre in Malta to cater for its operations with regard to Content, Contact and Abuse management for the internet and media industry worldwide, particularly the iGaming industry. The local project forms an integral part of the Group’s strategy and business expansion pro-gramme. This project is expected to generate more than 200 jobs over three years time, with significant investment in human resources, development and training. Discussions on this project development were initiated early in 2007.
The Malta project will generate €5 to 10 million in new contracts from outsource work that Besedo has negotiated with various clients.
Besedo has been in business since 2002 and has since registered signifi-cant growth rates of between 50% to 100% per annum, which have led the Group expansion overseas in a relatively short period.
In fact, lately Besedo have set up another company in Malaysia and restructured their own set-up in anticipation of their Malta project. Its specialisation is in Content, Con-tact and Abuse management. Initially, Besedo started working with classi-fied sites and from the beginning it managed to secure contracts from the largest classified sites in Sweden. Ever since, Besedo expanded its customer base throughout Europe with clients mainly within iGaming, classifieds and financial services.
Besedo also announced it will be investing heavily in educating and developing its local staff.
Austin Gatt noted the significance of this investment is not simply the creation of more than 200 new jobs here but that a quality leap is being made in the nature of the business we attract. This is no ordinary call centre. It uses our ICT infrastructure to provide a high value-added service to customers.
Significantly upon being tipped off about this announcement, the Opposition last week announced it will work on attracting business process outsourcing business. This was a cynical move to attempt to take credit for the work we have done over the past five years and that they had so harshly criticised.
Notwithstanding this the Back-Office sector in Malta is now earning respect internationally. Following today’s announcement by Besedo, the Back-Office sector in Malta will now be employing over a 1,000 people. These are a 1,000 jobs that did not exist a few years ago.
“One again our vision for the ICT industry and the many job opportunities it creates is being realised in jobs in the here and now. Unlike the Labour Party we are not converts to ICT. We have been its promoters here, recognised last year by the World Economic Forum is the 2nd best promoter of the use of ICT worldwide. This was never an end in itself. Our objective was the creation of jobs in this new economic stream.
“It is also significant to point out that Besedo will be investing heavily in training providing job opportunities to people who are yet to refine their skills. This is how we are all sharing in this wealth we are creating for our country.”