Fiji’s other niche: business process outsourcing on the rise
Call centres are big business in Fiji, where the biggest challenge is finding enough workers to meet international demand. Business Advantage Fiji speaks with two of the key players in the country’s business process outsourcing sector.
Workers at outsourcing specialist Mindpearl. Credit: Mindpearl
Walking down Suva’s main thoroughfare, Victoria Parade, in mid-2026, perhaps the most noticeable change from a year earlier is the eight-storey building that is now entirely occupied by outsourcing business Centrecom.
It is an unusually prominent reminder of Fiji’s other niche sector: business process outsourcing (BPO).
Centrecom is an international BPO operator, employing around 1,000 people across four Fiji sites. The new Suva site, which has consolidated three smaller sites around the capital, is the largest. Centrecom has a similar operation in Malta, smaller offices worldwide and it caters to a worldwide client base.
Centrecom’s building in central Suva. Credit: Centrecom
Whereas the nation’s thriving tourism industry is high-profile, this sector is typically heard but not seen. But, once Fiji was linked to the Southern Cross fibre-optic cable in 2000, giving it broadband internet years before its Pacific Island neighbours, it was quick to recognise the potential of its workforce to manage specific business tasks or operational functions for international companies (e.g. contact centres, human resources/finance/accounting services and IT helpdesks).
Today, the outsourcing sector employs over 9,000 Fijians and contributes around F$280 million directly to the local economy.
“Our workers are highly educated, have a neutral English accent and a strong understanding of different cultural perspectives,” says Josefa Wivou, Executive Director of Outsource Fiji, the state-funded entity responsible for promoting the sector. “We also offer a short travel time from source markets such as Australia and New Zealand, allowing clients to make regular site visits if they wish.”
Skills challenge
The biggest challenge facing the sector is recruiting enough workers to meet demand. Fiji has less than one million inhabitants and has suffered a well-documented exodus of skilled workers post-Covid. The outsourcing sector has been especially impacted as it typically attracts younger workers.
Given this supply constraint, it is no surprise that Outsource Fiji sees moving up the value chain the key to future growth, in the form of so-called Knowledge Outsource Processing (KPO):
“KPO includes high-value categories like accounting, research, financial services and legal,” explains Wivou. “Workers may require a lot more training but the pay packet is much higher than in the traditional BPO space.”
While Fiji can’t compete with India or the Philippines in terms of scale, it has clearly found its own niche at the premium end of the market. Centrecom’s Managing Director, Anthony Cassar, sums up this ethos:
“We don’t want to be the biggest, we want to be the best and we choose our partners carefully. Whilst we have grown, especially post-Covid, it’s about sustainable growth.”
This article appears in Business Advantage Fiji 2026/27, which will be published in mid-August 2026.
