MANILA - As the Philippine economy expands, more Filipinos are returning to the country and finding employment in the growing information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry, executives of the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) said.
With a relatively higher pay, IT-BPO jobs have become appealing not only to Filipinos who do not want to leave the country but also those who have returned amid rosier opportunities here, Joey Gurango, president of IBPAP member-organization Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA), told reporters last week.
Gurango’s software firm, for instance, now employs four Filipinos who had previously worked in Australia and Singapore. Gurango left the country in the 1970s to work in the US and landed jobs in top IT companies such as Apple and Microsoft, but returned to the Philippines to help jumpstart local software startups.
“All we have to do is educate Filipinos in developing countries what is there for them to come back,” Gurango said, noting a wide array of opportunities being offered by the fast-rising IT-BPO sector.
IBPAP president Jose Mari P. Mercado said every IT-BPO firm in the country has at least one employee who previously worked abroad but has come back and gained employment in the industry, which has been growing leaps and bounds.
IBPAP senior executive director Gillian Joyce G. Virata said the Philippines is next only to India in providing IT-BPO services, with about a tenth of the global pie being supported here.
As for voice services, which comprises two-thirds of the domestic industry, the Philippines is number one, with a 38-percent share of the global market, Virata said, citing the latest global market size report of research firm Everest Group. She said the country could easily account for two-fifths of the voice sector by 2016.
IBPAP’s roadmap projects industry revenues to hit $25 billion and employment to reach 1.3 million by 2016.
To attain the roadmap’s targets, making IT-BPO services available throughout the country is a key strategy, Mercado said.
At present, 72 percent of IT-BPO operations in the country are based in Metro Manila, but the industry is working to expand the share of provinces to 40 percent by 2016, in line with the commitment made by the Department of Science and Technology’s Information and Communications Technology Office (DOST-ICTO) to President Benigno Aquino III.
“Our value proposition is ‘you need not go out of the country to get a job,’ and will extend it to ‘you need not go out of your own city or province,” Mercado said.
Virata noted that three-fifths of college graduates come from outside Metro Manila, and many of them can be trained to work in the IT-BPO sector.
Mercado said the right matching of skills coupled with local government units’ (LGU) commitment to put in place IT infrastructure would result in increased competitiveness and attractiveness of sites outside Metro Manila for investors.
In line with the public-private “Next Wave Cities” initiative, IBPAP is embarking on a 10-city road show that will cover the cities of Antipolo, Baguio, Butuan. Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, Laoag, Naga, Puerto Princesa, Tacloban and Tarlac, in a bid to promote ICT in these localities.
Fast-growing IT-BPO hubs such as Bacolod, Cebu and Davao show that more employment can be generated and firms can flourish even outside Metro Manila, Mercado said.
To showcase what the Philippine IT-BPO industry can offer, IBPAP is hosting the 5th International Outsourcing Summit (IOS) with the theme “Unlocking Possibilities, Creating New Vistas” on October 6-8 at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel.
source: interaksyon.com
