BusinessWeek‘s Assif Shameen has cited the Philippines as having the awesome opportunity to flourish in the outsourcing industry. He offers five reasons why the Philippines will potentially succeed as the top outsourcing provider in the world.

First, there is great language advantage. A huge chunk of the Philippine population is literate in English. The education system, public and private, uses the English language as a medium of instruction. Filipinos, even when untrained, have a good grasp of the language. Moreover, more Filipinos can be easily trained to speak with an American accent or any accent the client prefers. Most Filipinos can communicate well, written or oral, in the English language, and can be trained to do better.

The Philippines also has a vast human resource talent pool that can be tapped for various services. Aside from the widely growing number of qualified call center agents, a lot of Filipinos are already skilled and trained or trainable to provide medical transcription services, legal services, SEO and web development services, software development, virtual assistance, and other such services. There is still a widely untapped pool of talents in the Philippines which can be utilized via outsourcing.

Another important edge of the Philippines in terms of outsourcing is the country and its people’s familiarity and affinity for American (US) laws and culture. The Filipinos, most having relatives or friends based in the US, and being exposed to US mass media for a long time, are very much well-versed in US laws, situations, environment, and culture.

The Philippines, comparatively speaking, offers affordable human resources and office space. Furthermore, the cost of operations in the Philippines is very much affordable and well within the range of its closest competitors in the BPO industry. Aside from the capital Metro Manila, many other cities in the country such as Davao City, Baguio, and Cebu offer a vast pool of talent, and affordable office space.

Finally, the government is very much supportive is providing infrastructure and money to developing human resources through education and training. There is also focus on improving telecommunications infrastructure in order to encourage businesses to invest in the country’s BPO industry.

According to Shameem, these are among the reasons why the Philippines has what he calls an “awesome opportunity” of making it big in the outsourcing industry.