The Philippines' offshore IT-enabled services stand to earn
approximately $1bn (£0.65bn) a year from the country's current pool
of at least 290,000 IT-skilled Filipino professionals, according to
a Gartner report.
Citing the results of an industry study carried out by Gartner
Research and Advisory Services, Manuel Roxas II, secretary of the
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), said the expected revenue
would come from global companies looking to outsource their
backroom operations in the Philippines.
Recently, the government identified the IT-enabled services sector
as one of the 10 industries that will bring in huge revenues for
the country under the Philippine Export Development Plan or PEDP.
Roxas said the study cited the Philippines as an "offshore
destination of choice" for various IT-enabled services such as
contact centres, business processing outsourcing (BPO) that
includes shared service centres for multinational companies,
application outsourcing like application development, maintenance
and management, digital animation, and medical transcription.
He noted that a number of Gartner's commentaries validated and
confirmed findings by both the government and the private sector on
the country's inherent competitive advantages and important
initiatives for the sector. Both the DTI and the Information
Technology and E-Commerce Council (ITECC), the country's highest
policy-making body for ICT, are pushing offshore e-services
development to put the Philippines on the global IT map.
Conducted last March 2002, the study focused on an analysis of the
Philippine market's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
in-depth discussions with local key IT practitioners.
It yielded reports on the offshore outsourcing opportunities in the
Philippines and an in-depth assessment of the country for offshore
IT-enabled services, said Roxas.
"The early findings that they [Gartner] have verbally conveyed is
that they validate many of the assumptions that we have with
respect to our branding and product positioning strategies," he
said in a previous interview.
The research firm cited the country's English competency, high
literacy rate as well as adaptability to Western business practice
and culture, particularly that of the US, as its key advantages in
the field of offshore e-services.
"With these advantages, Gartner sees quite a healthy uptake of
transaction initiation, vis-a-vis the US market," Roxas noted.
"This would also mean that transactions coming in would be of a
higher level in the value chain rather than just passive
transactions like the Q&A type of call centre service."