New U.S. Senate Bill may impact BPOs’ presence in Belize
By William Ysaguirre (Freelance Writer)
BELIZE CITY, Mon. Aug. 11, 2025
The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector in Belize has accounted for a significant number of new jobs in the service industry in recent years, but BPOs operating in Belize may find some of their profits curtailed, and their cost of doing business increased, by a new Bill which is before the United States Congress – a Bill for the “Keep Call Centers in America Act” of 2025.
The Bill aims to incentivize BPOs to keep their jobs in the US, by restricting the access of those companies which employ workers in other countries, to federal funding, and to penalize such companies which have already received federal money, if they have moved more than 30 percent of their call center work outside the U.S. The ostensible purpose of the new law is to create greater transparency for consumers when they seek customer service from a company which sold them a product or is providing them with a service, such as a mobile carrier or Internet service provider.
When the Act becomes law, it will make it less profitable to move call center work overseas by penalizing BPOs with punitive fines. BPO companies may be fined up to $10,000 per day, if they fail to give the Secretary of Labor 4 months’ notice, 120 days in advance, when they plan to move a call center or outsource 30 percent or more of their call center work to a jurisdiction outside the U.S. The law will task the Secretary of Labor with creating a list of all companies which have moved more than 30 percent of their work overseas, and this list must be publicly available and kept up-to-date.
Any company so blacklisted becomes ineligible for federal grants or guaranteed loans for five years. If a blacklisted company has already received a federal grant or loan, they may suffer a monthly penalty, and the loan or grant could be canceled. Such companies become ineligible for federal contracts, as any call center work under a federal contract must be done within the U.S. The process of granting new contracts will also favor those U.S. companies which have not moved call center jobs overseas.
The new law will also require full disclosure to customers who call the center. As previously mentioned, the declared intent of this provision is to offer consumers more options, so that they may know more about the customer service personnel with whom they are communicating.
These “business entities” will be required by law to disclose the exact location of an overseas customer service agent with whom a customer is communicating; and the agent must inform the customer of their geographic location at the beginning of the call. The agent must also advise the customer that they have the right to be transferred to an agent based in the U.S. When a company is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for customer service, it must also inform the customer of this fact at the start of the call, and to offer the consumer the option to be transferred to a human agent based in the U.S.
Customers, after being advised of these options at the start of the call, then can request an immediate transfer to a U.S.-based human agent.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will enforce these disclosure requirements, and any company found in breach of these requirements would be considered to be engaged in an unfair or deceptive act or practice, which the FTC Act would penalize.
