MANILA, Philippines -- The road to one million outsourcing jobs in 2010 is not as easy as government and the private sector would have thought.
In an interview, Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) chairman Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III said the outsourcing industry demand is expected to grow by 50 percent year-on-year for the next three years.
With that demand, government led by the CICT and the Department of Trade and Industry Regional Operations Group, in tandem with the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) are now identifying more than 20 cities where they can develop and recruit more talent.
These three groups are now working to push these cities as part of a strategy to "expand" the local outsourcing industry outside of Metro Manila, Chua said.
"We want to establish regional information and communications technology hubs so that not all the businesses are just going to Metro Manila," the CICT executive said.
In 2007, the local outsourcing industry created 300,000 jobs. The local industry, in particular the BPAP, aims to hit one million jobs by 2010.
"That's a pretty lofty objective. That's why we really need to tap into these other sources of talent," Chua said.
There is now a scorecard being used to evaluate regional hubs in the country. The score card looks at the talent pool, infrastructure, cost and the business environment in these cities.
The government will come up with a ranking of the cities soon. The government has released 16 cities, including Metro Manila as regional ICT hubs.
"The biggest issue is still talent. We really need to work with the industry and the academe because in 2007 there were more jobs than people to fill them," he said.
The BPAP and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) signed an agreement recently to implement a scholarship fund promised by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. The agreement is related to a commitment made by Macapagal-Arroyo who promised to allocate P350 million in scholarships for the training of some 70,000 near-hires or potential workers for the BPO industry, through the help of Tesda. The scholarship is part of the PGMA Training for Work Scholarship Program (PGMA-TWSP).
