CEBU, Philippines - Despite the global financial crunch that hit most industries, a Commission of Information and Communication Technology (CICT) executive is confident that the Philippines’ Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry will meet the 20 percent growth target this year.
One of the growth drivers of the Philippines is strongly anchored on its attractiveness as preferred site for offshore operations, said CICT secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua.
“As of now, we are on target for the 20 percent growth this year,” said Roxas-Chua, although he said that the industry is now very cautious in hitting ambitious growth target as companies around the world are still having second thoughts whether or not to pursue expansion plans.
He said Cebu for instance has already gained the international spotlight as preferred BPO destination, and this could give boost to the industry’s growth this year.
Roxas-Chua noted that although most BPO investors are very cautious in their expansion plans, some on the other hand, have bravely pursued investment plans this year.
He mentioned that Cebu will be able to continuously attract new BPO investments saying “Cebu has respectable international business community because of its friendly environment.”
The CICT secretary also lauded Cebu’s active stance on industry-academe linkage that impress the BPO investors.
Once the world recovers from the recession jitters, Roxas-Chua is confident the Philippines will be able to capture a bigger chunk of the BPO investments, which will then domino to more jobs for the Filipino people.
“Despite the current global economic crisis, the IT-BPO industry is expected to grow approximately 20 percent for 2009. While the bulk of revenue still comes from voice services, the industry is now focusing on diversifying into the higher value-added non-voice services, such as software development, which will provide higher paying jobs to Filipinos,” he stressed.
The industry employed about 372 thousand workers as of year-end 2008 and generated 6 billion US dollars of export revenue for the year.
Meanwhile, the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) earlier announced that while the Philippines already created a leverage in the BPO voice service as well as growing software development segment, it is also fighting to seize the multi-million-dollar BPO creative industry.
BPAP executive director for talent development Jamea S. Garcia earlier said there is a huge potential that the Philippines could rake in a bigger share in job contracts from other countries, as Filipinos are known for their excellent creativity skills.
“We already have a lot of content development companies here that do jobs for Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and most of Japanese animation companies,” said Garcia.
In 2008, the creative BPO sector generated total revenue of US$150 million. The Philippines currently is getting 15 percent of the total creative outsourcing market, while India is getting 37 percent.
Source: The Freeman Cebu
