Global banking giant HSBC formally launched Tuesday a 31-million-dollar call centre in Sri Lanka as violence flared in the north of the island, officials said.
Sri Lanka beat contenders such as neighbouring India to secure HSBC's 11th call centre, a company official told reporters, adding that they were not too worried about the deadly attacks in the area.
"We are not unduly worried about the situation here in Sri Lanka. HSBC has been around in this country for over 100 years," said Alan Burton, managing director of HSBC Electronic Data Processing Lanka (Pvt) Ltd.
A total of 26 people have been killed since Saturday in Sri Lanka's northern and eastern regions, where Tamil rebels are demanding a homeland.
The HSBC unit is currently the biggest call centre in Sri Lanka in terms of employment, with 1,326 staff. It has 1,666 seats with room to expand to 3,000 staffers.
"The Sri Lankan unit is primarily a banking operation to service our operations in the United States and Britain," said Malcolm H. Wagget, the group's chief operating officer for South Asia.
"We don't have plans to add more centres next year, because we have adequate capacity available in Sri Lanka and in India, where we have five such centres," he said. With around 30 operators, Sri Lanka's business process outsourcing (BPO) is worth about 100 million dollars, according to a survey conducted by the local Information Communication and Technology Agency (ICTA).
For Sri Lanka, much of the outsourcing business is from Europe, Scandinavia and Australia.
Sri Lanka dispenses with minimum investment requirements for BPO operations, with three-year tax holidays thrown in as an added incentive.