MANILA, Philippines -- A local executive of a systems integration and development company and the head of a local industry organization have acknowledged that professional poaching remains a nagging problem in the country.

Poaching of Filipino software engineers and developers has affected the growth and the businesses of local software companies struggling to keep their people from leaving for better opportunities abroad, said Emmanuel Caintic, chief executive officer of Philippine-based Incuventure Partners Corp. (IPC), in an interview.

Engaged in developing systems for government and private clients, IPC is now focusing on efforts to address the turnover of its people to foreign software companies, while they also find ways to bring more incentives to their employees.

"People are our assets. We're suffering from turnovers," said Caintic who has been running the company since 2001. IPC currently employs about 70 people and expects to hire more as they're expecting to get more projects this year.

IPC's clients include the Department of Budget and Management, the Bureau of Treasury through the Philippine Dealing Exchange, and the St. Luke's Medical Center.

The company is now hoping to be a leading service oriented architecture service company in the country, providing the building blocks that would allow companies to effectively address business pains using technology.

Having worked with companies like Sun Microsystems and Oracle, IPC is now pouring money into developing a framework that would require fewer people to maintain it given the problems of turnover, said Terence Gamboa, chief technology officer of IPC.

In a separate interview, Philippine Software Industry Association Inc. president Beng Coronel acknowledged the problem of poaching in the country.

"While we abhor the poaching of people, we're also trying to encourage compliance to the mandatory 30-day notice. This should be followed. Losing people is bad enough, but losing accounts and projects is worse," she said.

A study done in 2006 by PSIA showed that the current average attrition rate in local software companies was about 12.5 percent.

"This is the rate of people we’re losing to another country or another local company," she added.

Over the years, she believes that the attrition rate in local companies has remained the same. What changed were the countries recruiting local software engineers, Coronel said.

She pointed out that Filipino software engineers are now migrating to Singapore and Malaysia. In the past, it was the United States, Australia and the Middle East, she said.

"The reality is that people will seek satisfaction. Hopefully, a bill would be filed in the country so that companies will be required to pay for the training of these people they recruit," she lamented.

Poaching is also happening within the country, as more outsourcing companies are setting up business, she acknowledged.

PSIA's position, she stressed, is to push more training of the right people to man the growing market for software companies here and abroad.

"If you cannot control outflow of people, make sure inflow of people is aggressively pursued. Train, train and train the right people," Coronel said.

There is also an unwritten rule among local software companies when they hire people from friendly companies, she said.

"We check each other about the movements of some people," she said.

Poaching of software engineers within India has increased the salary rates of software engineers, the PSIA executive said. The Philippines hopes to avoid this, as this may hurt the competitiveness of the country.