Narayan AmmachchiForeign investment is accelerating in Colombia’s Barranquilla, particularly in BPOs. But the supply of English-speaking workers is lagging badly—creating a skills gap that now risks slowing the sector’s rise.
A quick scan of local job portals tells the story. Several BPO firms are advertising for bilingual professionals.
In contact centres, English-speaking employees can earn 30% to as much as 90% more than their non-bilingual peers.
Job listings for Bilingual Customer Service Agents typically offer monthly salaries of around US$700 to US$760, with English requirements often set at B2+.
“The shortage in bilingual workers is too huge a barrier for the BPOs to surmount,” said Jeff Pappas, senior managing director at Newmark, a global real estate firm that helps BPOs identify ideal locations to set up operations.
“Atlántico has solid infrastructure and very cooperative government agencies, but the bilingual talent shortage is real,” added Pappas, who said he has two clients in Barranquilla and has visited the province twice over the past few years.
“The number of English-speaking professionals available is shrinking, at least C-level roles are difficult to find at a reasonable cost.”
Platforms such as Computrabajo and Jooble list hundreds of bilingual job openings in Barranquilla alone.
Why invest in Barranquilla?
Located on the Caribbean coast along the Magdalena River, Barranquilla has long stood out as a lower-cost and business-friendly alternative to Bogotá and Medellín. Four free trade zones in and around the city offer tax incentives, while office rents remain well below those in Colombia’s larger commercial hubs.
The city has also built a deep stock of modern office space. More than 20 business centres provide A+ grade offices at an average rent of about US$11.6 per square metre, compared with roughly US$18 in Medellín and US$19 in Bogotá.
Connectivity strengthens Barranquilla’s case further. As a coastal city with 13 submarine cable landings, it benefits from strong international bandwidth and high network redundancy—critical for call quality and cloud-based BPO operations.
Only a three-hour flight from Florida, Barranquilla also has a direct link to Miami’s Network Access Point, strengthening its business ties with the U.S.
BPO Players
Barranquilla’s BPO journey began early. U.S. customer experience firm Sykes was the first major foreign player to set up operations in the city. By the time it was acquired by Sitel in 2021, Sykes was already running multiple offices across Barranquilla.
Investment momentum accelerated sharply after the pandemic. Before COVID-19, IT and BPO accounted for about 19% of foreign investment in the city. The global surge in demand for customer experience services pushed that share much higher. By late 2024, foreign investment in the sector had climbed past 35%, according to ProBarranquilla.
“The sector has also undergone a significant shift: over the past five years, BPO initiatives have moved from being primarily national to more than 90% foreign-led,” the agency told Nearshore Americas in a written statement.
The expansion now goes beyond traditional BPOs. Global corporations such as Amazon, Dell, Acer, Walmart, Landstar and AT&T have also set up shared services operations in Barranquilla.
Major BPO operators active in Atlántico include Teleperformance, Sitel, Foundever, TaskUs, Auxis, Connect2BPO, ADEC, TTEC, Anchora and Quantico BPO.
Among the newest entrants is TaskUs, which opened operations in Barranquilla in March this year. Reports suggest the company has already hired close to 1,000 workers. Over the past five years, BPOs alone have created more than 7,000 jobs in Barranquilla, with the sector accounting for 24% of foreign investment inflows.
Bilingual training push
Colombian authorities are well aware that bilingual talent is the lifeblood of foreign BPO operations. Over the past decade, the government has rolled out multiple training initiatives aimed at expanding the country’s pool of English-speaking professionals.
The bulk of that responsibility rests with SENA, Colombia’s National Training Service. The publicly funded institution provides vocational training nationwide and plays a central role in feeding talent into the BPO sector. In Atlántico alone, SENA operates more than 20 centres.
During the height of the pandemic, the government stepped up its efforts with the launch of the “English for Work” programme. The target was ambitious: produce 8,000 bilingual workers by 2023.
That goal was not met. Even today, only around 15% of professionals in Colombia speak a second language—a figure that remains low by global standards.
International rankings underline the gap. In the EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) 2025, Colombia ranked 76th out of 123 countries, placing it in the “low proficiency” category with a score of 480, below the global average of 488.
With shortages showing little sign of easing, authorities have broadened their strategy. English training has been extended to schoolteachers, and two months ago the government introduced a virtual Pearson Placement Test, aligned with the CEFR framework. The one-hour assessment evaluates listening, reading, writing and speaking skills.
Add comment