People Support, Fujitsu To Begin Operations Here

Two multinational companies, PeopleSupport Inc. and Fujitsu Consulting, have announced plans to begin operations in Costa Rica – a step that will provide a total of 950 new jobs.

U.S.-based PeopleSupport, which offers business process outsourcing, will begin operations this month in the Ultrapark free zone, north of San José, with an initial investment of $5 million. The company’s Costa Rican operations will provide services to clients within the Hispanic market in the United States – meaning that, in contrast with other call centers here, People-Support’s estimated 500 initial hires will work entirely in Spanish.

The country’s educated and bilingual labor force was a major attraction for the company, according to PeopleSupport President Lance Rosenzweig. PeopleSupport also has outsourcing operations in the Philippines, where it employs more than 5,000 people.

Come April, Ultrapark will also be home to a call center for Japanese company Fujitsu, which offers business consulting and information technology services and plans to hire 450 customer-service agents with mastery of written and spoken English during the first year of operations. Fujitsu employs 150,000 people in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and plans an initial investment here of $1.7 million.

With these new additions, a total of 39 multinationals have service-sector operations here.